Feb
4
What You Don’t Know About Keywords… That Your Competitors May Know
February 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Did you know that 25% of searches each month are brand new, never before seen search words and phrases?
That is shocking. You would think with the number of search queries running through Google, they have seen it all.
We spend so much time on keyword research - and rightfully so, it’s the foundation of your campaign. But this new information tells us that we need to tweak the process a little bit to keep up with the ever changing SEO world.
So, how do you handle keyword research and make sure you are staying current?
First and foremost you want to make sure you have outlined your strategy. Without a plan in place you are likely to forget to do it, and it’ll just rattle around in the back of your brain or sit on a post-it note that gets stuck to the back of another piece of paper in your planner.
So, before that happens, let’s define your plan right now.
1. Start with a brainstorming session to list all possible words and phrases that people would use to find what you have to offer. Remember to put yourself in the mindset of the potential customer.
2. Do the necessary research to continue building your list.
a. Research your competitors and see what keywords they are using.
b. Look at your web stats and logs and pull words and phrases from there (this is a great source of info, you can find the words that people are already using to find you and enhance your rankings on those words so you can get even more traffic).
c. If you have a search feature on your site, look at the logs and see what people are searching for within your site once they get there.
3. Take the large master list you have come up with, and use a keyword tool to determine how much traffic there is and how competitive the words/phrases are. Remember you can’t live and die by this information; it only acts as a guide for you.
4. Take your list and break it into segments. You want some “low hanging fruit” - which means keywords that may be longer phrases, with less traffic. These words will be easy to rank for fairly quickly so you can use those as your starting point to drive some quick traffic to the site. The second segment of your list should be words that are more competitive and have more traffic and will take longer to get rankings for. You will be glad you selected keywords from each segment, because you will be getting traffic from the low hanging fruit while you are waiting for the more competitive phrases to kick in.
And now you write your content, optimize your site and you are all done, right?
Wrong! Here is where most people are missing out and you need to plan further action.
5. Once a month you should do keyword research and see what new words and phrases come up and add those new words and phrases to your campaign. If you find once a month is too often, do it every other month. Just make sure you have a plan to check back regularly so you can take advantage of new search phrases and tap into more traffic.
If you are adding content to your site like you should be, then adding these new keyword phrases should be easy to work into the new content you are writing.
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of http://www.EcomBuffet.com . Since 1998, her expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer can be reached at Jennifer@ecombuffet.com
Article Directory: Article Dashboard
Jan
17
The Seven Keys To Success in Article Marketing
January 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Article marketing is an free and simple strategy you can use to increase your targeted website traffic. As a website traffic building strategy it works both directly and indirectly.
When you write and submit articles to article directories, people can download your article and use it on their websites or in their ezines as long as they include your resource bio information, including a link to your site. When people read your article they can click on your link and visit your site. In this way, article marketing directly brings visitors to your site.
However, article marketing can also increase your website traffic indirectly by creating a lot of one-way links to your website or blog. The number of back links to your site combined with the quality of those links (reputation and relevance of the other site) is used by search engines to determine link popularity. Link popularity is an important part of search engine page rank calculations.
Article marketing is therefore one of the best ways to promote your website or blog. Here are seven keys to success in article marketing:
1. Know Your Audience. It is important to know who you are trying to reach with your article. Your article should be written with the needs of a particular audience in mind, who would be interested in the information and products you offer on your website.
2. Consider Popular Search Terms. The most successful articles take into account the things that people are searching on within your subject area. This helps you narrow down your focus to address clear needs of your targeted audience. You can utilize helpful aids such as Yahoo’s keyword analysis tool to identify niches of interest to searchers.
3. Incorporate Keywords Into Your Article. Once you have chosen which search term or terms you will use incorporate these as your keyword in the article title and body. Avoid using the the same words or phrases too often as search engines will penalize you. If you keep it to one to two percent you will be safe. By including a popular keyword, you improve your possibilities that people who are searching for your information will find your article in search results.
4. Give Good Value. The whole point of article marketing is to build website traffic. If you want your readers who click on your link in the resource box, your article needs to be interesting, informative and relevant.
5. Write Well. Your article also needs to be well written. If you are a poor writer and wouldn’t know correct spelling or grammar from incorrect, consider a ghost writer for your writing work. The global marketplace has made it possible to get well written articles for very reasonable prices.
6. Write And Submit Often. Article marketing offer benefits for the long run. To generate targeted website traffic in substantial numbers you will need to write and submit articles on a regular basis. Some will be more popular than others and you won’t always be able to know which those will be.
7. Choose Your Article Directories Wisely. A high traffic article directory is a necessity. Some other directories do not have their traffic but they have very high search engine positions which can generate traffic from search results.
If you use these keys to article marketing success, you will find your website traffic and therefore your profits increasing exponentially over time.
Learn how to use article marketing to promote your website or product by submitting to the best article directories to get your articles published.
Article Directory: Article Dashboard
Jan
15
What is SEO? Part 2
January 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
In What is SEO? Part 1 you learned what SEO means and is and you learned what Search Engines are and how they work. Now you will learn more about some basics and techniques that professionals do to optimize a website for the search engines:
Keyword/Phrase Research - this step is key in the SEO process and should be first above any other step. First, you need to find the keywords/phrases that you think a person would search for to find your website. Really you are researching keywords that are targeted and relevant to your market. Next you will research the traffic volume or popularity of the keywords/phrases, this is essential because it would be pointless to optimize your website for a keyword or phrase that gets zero (0) searches. Next you will research the Competition of the keywords or keyphrases that you have chosen. If a keyword/phrase is too competitive you have to analyze whether or not it is worth optimizing. The reason for this is simple, if you have chosen the keyword “Real Estate” then you have a huge task ahead of you. We are not saying that you can’t get ranked on the first page of the major search engines for this keyword but you have to decide if it is worth the time and effort. Choose keywords/phrases that are unique and yet are attainable.
Url/Domain Name Optimization - Once you have found your main keyword you are going to focus on the next step, which is to decide what your Domain name is going to be. You might ask, “What is a Domain Name?” A Domain Name is the name that a person would type into a web-browser to visit your website e.g. www.yourdomainnamehere.com. To optimize your Domain Name you will want to find something that is short, targeted to your market, explains your site, and uses the main keyword you have chosen through your Keyword Research. So for example if your keyword was “Real Estate” then you would want to use those keywords in your domain name. Some may argue that using the keywords in your domain name is to general and doesn’t brand your company. This is for you to decide, but it is proven at least for now that the Search Engines use the domain name text in their algorithms of how they see your site’s relevancy to the search criteria. Note: The domain name you choose needs to be available to purchase. On-Page Optimization - another important step of optimizing your website is optimizing the web pages that the user and the spiders see. Now this is the trickiest part of SEO because you want to optimize your site for the Search Engine Spiders but you also want to optimize your site for your users/visitors. The best rule of thumb is to lean toward optimizing your site for the users first because more and more the search engines are looking at your site as if a human was, this is called Latent Semantic Indexing, optimize as natural as possible. So on-page optimization uses the following techniques:
* Content Optimization
* Keyword Placement (Frequency, Density, Proximity, etc.)
* Title Tag Optimization
* Meta Tag Optimization
* Spider/Robot Tag Optimization
* Image Alt Optimization
* Internal Link Structure
* 301 Redirects
* Robot.txt Creation
* Broken Links & Page Optimization
* Site Mapping
* Avoiding Specific Design Optimization Issues (Graphic, Flash, Dynamic, Frameset, and Javascript only Sites)
Off-Page Optimization - As important as any of the other steps of SEO, Off-page optimization is key to your success. Think of it this way the search engines want to see how popular your website is to the online world. This strategy of off-page optimization is where you optimize your website off the pages of your site. Link Building is most important to the off-page optimization process. Link Building is where you get a link back to your website on someone else’s site. The important step is to have your keyword within the anchor text of the link not just simply putting www.mydomainname.com as the link text. Getting links from Authority Sites (high traffic and highly ranked sites) is also very important again letting the search engines know that your site is popular. Most importantly with link building is getting links from sites that are relevant to your website and your keywords/phrases, if you for example get 100 links from Health Care websites and your Keyword is targeted toward “Real Estate” then the search engines won’t think you are really that popular or relevant to the criteria of “Real Estate”. Note: Getting links from irrelevant sites is not bad just not going to optimize your off-page process. Here are some of the important items of off-page optimization:
* Link Building (One Way and Reciprocal Links)
* Link Baiting (Luring others to want to link to your website)
* Article Submissions (Keyword rich content with links back to your website submitted to Article Directories)
* Press Release Submission (Optimized content with keywords & links, and also a great Link Baiting opportunity)
* Directory Submissions
* Search Engine Submission (Submitting your website to the search engines saying, “Spiders come look at my site, I have food for you.”)
* Sitemap Submissions
Monitoring Search Engine Rankings (Analytics) - One important skill in SEO is measuring the results of applying some of the basic SEO techniques that we have mentioned above. To be a successful Search Engine Optimization professional you must Test, Test, and Test again. Patience is another quality that someone doing SEO must possess. You need to realize that you will not see results in one (1) or two (2) days actually you must be prepared to begin waiting and it could take time to see results maybe for two (2) to even (6) months. A quick way to see if you website is even seen (indexed) by the search engines is by typing site:www.yourdomainnamehere.com into the search engine, if your site is indexed in the search engine you will see results in the query if not you will see “Your search - site:www.yourdomainnamehere.com - did not match any documents”. The manual way to monitor your rankings is simply typing in your keyword/phrase you are trying to rank for and search through the search engine results until you find your website. There are tools that you can use to monitor your rankings. Web analytics measures your online activity such as how much traffic your website is receiving, from where, and also measuring conversion. The most famous and may we add free Web analytic software is Google Analytics. This free web analytics tool is very robust giving you the geographic, trends, exit pages, and referrers of where your traffic is coming from and leaving from.
Now we hope you have learned some key terms, techniques, and basics of what Search Engine Optimization is and how it affects your business and even your life.
So “What is SEO?” well have given you some of the very basics above in this article but we realize that there is much much more to SEO than just these things and you must keep up on all the changes and updates of the Search Engines.
Learn SEO with the easy way, just visit: http://www.LearnSEOLive.com
Article Directory: Article Dashboard
Jan
14
Importance of Keyword Discovery OR KeyPhrase Research
January 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Keyword Discovery or Keyphrase Research is of high importance in the success of any website. Internet searchers use keywords and key phrases to find what they want. If your website uses such key elements in a proper way, they could lead you to a successful online business. If not, your site needs a serious reconsideration.
Importance of Keyword Research in Web Development
The choice of keywords is so important that experts recommend web developers to consider keyword discovery search as the initial step in their works. That is to say, even before choosing a name for your website, you need to know what your keywords will be.
After keyword and key phrase research, web developers can proceed to choose a name for their site. Texts, links, web design, meta data, all tags, comments and whatever in which words play some part will be done afterward based on the initial keyword discovery.
Which Keywords OR Keyphrases to Choose?
You should do some keyword discovery or keyphrase research to learn what people type while thinking about your information, product or service. Then, get the historical volume of a keyword that is searched and see how competitive it is.
Of course, if a keyword is searched a lot, it wouldn’t mean that it’s the best one for you. Actually, the competition for such a term will be way high too.
So, what’s the solution? You should choose the most effective one. Divide the popularity of a keyword (the number of searches for it) by its competitiveness (the number of results) and you’ll have the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) of that keyword.
The higher the result, the better that keyword will be to choose and use.
How Many Keywords / Keyphrases Do You Need?
When you begin your keyword discovery, you should make a list of keywords and keyphrases. The most effective ones, one to three of them, will be your main keywords or keyphrases used at your main page, usually home page. The total number of keywords for your website will depend on the size of your whole site, the content of each individual page, etc.
Generally, the number of keywords or key phrases for each page should be from 3 to 10. However, it’s usually recommended not to begin your new page or main page of the new site with more than 3 keyphrases.
Keywords vs Keyphrases?
While searching, if you use a single keyword, you are searching for general information, product or service which is usually a brand name these days. The longer the string of words in a keyword cluster, the more specific such a keyphrase is. Success is in selecting your best keyphrases, not keywords.
An example:
You run a foodstuff recipe website and now want to be found for a particular salad for a special event, Easter. Let’s say you use Google for this search. Would you use “salad” as your main keyword? I guess not, because you know that this term could bring you around 40 millions of results. It means a lot of competition.
What about “Easter salad”? it definitely lowers the degree of competition for you as there will be around 1.2 million results. Great difference, isn’t it? This, by itself, shows how different it is to add one more word to the search term. To narrow the search, I even recommend to use one more word to the string. It will be “Easter salad recipes”.
Maybe the difference in results won’t be very different from “Easter salad”, but when Internet searchers use this last string of keywords (a keyphrase), they are more specific about what they need.
Important: If you write rich content on “salad recipes for Easter” and optimize a webpage for it, you will most probably be seen on the first page of the results.
How to Use Keywords or Keyphrase in Writing?
First things first. Your attitude is the most important thing. Write for your webpage visitors. Give them exactly the information related to the keyphrase you’re using. Then, at second stage consider the search engine and their rules.
Obviously, now that you’ve done keyphrase research, you’re supposed to make use of the result, in our example, “Easter salad recipes”. Use it at your title, body text, meta data, alt tags, etc in a natural way. Again, while doing this, avoid stuffing your page with this key phrase. Keep the keyword frequency, weight, etc in its appropriate proportion.
Don’t forget to use some synonymous terms. Google considers synonyms used at the same page by its algorithm. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should sacrifice your keyphrase research by providing a large number of synonymous words or phrases for it. Just consider it a few times.
How to Create Successful Web Pages?
Considering keyword discovery or keyphrase research suggested above, the right way to create successful web pages could be as follows:
Launch a thorough keyword discovery or keyphrase research.
Apply web copy writing techniques to create rich content for your pages.
Finally, optimize your web page to make sure your keyword discovery or keyphrase research hasn’t been done in vain.
Eventually, you’ll have one such a good web page. Do the same for all other pages of your site and you’ll see the result overtime.
Rahman Mehraby recommends you to perform a Website Assessment before taking any packages to Boost Website business. He writes articles to help webmasters gain higher organic search engine placement. His site: http://www.site-booster.com.
Article Directory: Article Dashboard
Jan
14
Link Building- Solving this mystery
January 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
What is the importance of SEO? If you want to promote and advertise your business through the web then SEO (search engine optimisation) plays a vital role in placing your website or webpage on the first page of the search engines on searching of specific keywords. These days SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has become a preferred medium to get your website recognised by online viewers.
While doing SEO work for your website various factors come into consideration. Link building is a key factor in search engine optimization. Building quality link with various relevant websites is the prime motto of every webmaster. In link building there are various ways one can do link building such as one way links, reciprocal links, Link bait, 3 way linking, press release, article submission and directory submission. In earlier times there were only reciprocal links but now major search engines like GOOGLE gives importance to one way links.
If the website you want to build link with is relevant, the link building of website will be suitable, permanent and authentic. If you wish to increase your back links then directory submission and article submission will be helpful for you. Submission of articles with high PR websites and the article with rich keywords help your website come first on the search engines. There are many companies competently do SEO and link building work. If you don’t have experience in SEO and link building this article will help you get detailed information on
SEO and link building.
Why SEO and link building
Google, Yahoo and MSN are the major search engines helping display websites for your area of interest (read ‘keywords’). When someone searches something on these search engines they bring the relevant websites by using searching technologies. Here keywords and key phrases play a significant role as online visitors get links of websites only after typing common words and search engines enable them the websites in which those keywords density are high.
There are two types of listings when an online visitor searches on a particular keyword. Some websites pay search engines to be displayed on certain keywords (Called ‘Sponsored List’). Other websites come
automatically without paying and is called organic listing.
If you have recently submitted your website to Google and want to bring your website on the first page when someone searches products and services that you offer, is not possible. Page rank is necessary for all organic listings that mark as 1 to 10. The more number of relevant linking you will build with your website the more possibility of your website will be appearing on the search engine.
Article submission is another tool to get more traffic and increase page rank. The more articles you write for your website and submit in different websites and directories the more links will be counted for page rank and getting preference by search engines.
Link building, article submissions are as important as website adjustment in the background.
Andy Robert is associated with maverickmav for many activities like SEO, SEO Service, Internet Marketing, Web Design, Search Engine
Optimization, Web Development, Graphic design & much more.
Article Directory: Article Dashboard
Jan
14
The Benefits of Backlinks
January 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Having knowledge of SEO tactics is helpful when marketing your web site. However, you will need more than this to rank well in the search engines when vying for highly competitive phrases. You will need backlinks, the more the better.
A backlink is when one webmaster exchanges links with another webmaster. I will place your link on my site and in return, you will place my link on your site. You will see that having a few high quality backlinks on your site will make it more appealing to the search engines.
Search engines, such as Google, will see a link on your site as a vote for you. A vote means that someone thought highly enough of your site to link to it. The more links, the more votes you have. The more votes, the more important your site must be. This could lead to a higher ranking with search engines and as you know, higher page ranking = higher volume in traffic.
Now that we know why backlinks are important, let’s discuss how to obtain them.
No one will “vote” or link to a site that is ordinary or low quality. To get more links, make sure your site has something to offer. Put high quality content that is unique on your site, something that cannot be found anywhere else. People will want to link to your site if they feel that it is unique and informative. If it is everyday or ordinary, they will think twice before exchanging links.
To help you obtain links, you should make the process as easy as possible. Consider setting up a “Link to Us” page that will provide html code for them to copy and paste on their site. Make sure to include your keywords within your anchor text (anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link) in the code you provide. They will in turn leave their information to be included on your site.
Another way to obtain backlinks is to write articles and submit them to various directories. Along with your article will be a resource box which will tell the readers a little bit about yourself. More importantly, it will include a link to your site. Other webmasters will post your article, with your resource box containing the link to your site, on their site. Providing they feel your article provides something of interest to its readers. One single article could get you dozen’s of backlinks.
In addition, you can find other sites related to yours and offer to exchange links, trade content or offer to write a regular column for them. You can also submit your site to free directories that are related to content of your site.
Lastly, find blogs that are related, and post comments. Be sincere, you never know what new relationships may form. You can not only trade links with the blog owner, but also ideas. You remember the old phrase “I’ll scratch your back, if you’ll scratch mine”. Use it to your advantage. Negotiate an opportunity where you will both benefit.
Lori Gorman is the owner/webmaster of http://www.myebizplace.com as well as a successful work at home mom and author. Visit her site for all the latest, guaranteed legitimate work at home opportunities. While there, sign up for a FREE subscription to her Work at Home Newsletter, filled with up to date opportunities as well as tips and ideas for your Home Business.
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Jan
10
The Best Article Submission Sites Can Improve Your Site’s Ranking For Free
January 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment
One of the most effective methods of improving your site’s ranking is to get external links that point back to your website. These are called back-links. Search engines use the number and quality of these back-links to determine the relative importance of your website. Sites that the search engines deem to be important will show on (or close to) page one when people search for particular terms or phrases. Less important sites (in the eyes of the search engines) will appear near the bottom of those search results. And, if your site is in a competitive niche, your results can appear on page 150, which does you no good at all.
How can you promote your site to the search engines if you have little or no money? You can write and submit articles. Each time you make a submission, your article is posted on the article directory site. By including one or more links pointing back to your site in the author’s resource box, you gather back-links. And the best part about it is you can submit as many articles as you like for free!
However, you should not submit articles to just any old directories, some give you better back-links than others. You should only use the best article submission sites. The best article submission sites are those that have a Page Rank of 4 or above. Many directories have a Page Rank of 1 or even zero. Your site gets little or no benefit when you submit articles to these sites. For that reason, it is absolutely imperative that you send your articles only to The Best Article Submission Sites.
Do you want to know how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide on submitting articles to promote your site and make money.
Make Some Money And Promote Your Site!
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Make Money With Your Own Product!
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Jan
9
Are you the owner of an online business and eager to promote your website and your services without spending a single dollar? Press release writing could well be one of the ways to advertising your products online. Technically speaking, press releases are news item which you can transform to cater to your marketing goals by writing ads that have the features of general news. This could be very advantageous in your publicity campaign since many people are bored of reading ad copies that only boast about themselves and want to read news which contains solid information and hard facts. One of the most essential internet marketing schemes, this could effectively attract the eyeballs from targeted groups.
Given below are three ideas to effectual press release writing that can give a boost to your advertising and marketing campaign programs:
1. Write your copy in the third person to create press releases that sound objective. Avoid the use of personalized phrases and words. Try to express what you want to say in as much as a concise and brief manner as possible. Straightforward description is the key here - lay out your press release in using the 4 Ws and 1H of news writing - who, what, when, where and how.
2. Try to steer clear from hype words. This is a definite no-no in press releases. Editors are extremely impatient of such texts and will discard them in no time. And on the other hand readers will find it too cliché to be honest hence the purpose your advertising copy will become ineffective. Simply use objective words and neutral descriptions.
3. When you want to insert hype in press releases there is a way to do it. Place direct quotes from people who lay a claim of loyalty to your products and services. Get the words of endorsement from your CEO or marketing officer and put them word by word in your article. Strategically insert them in your press release to add the X factor in your write-up. However, keep in mind not to carry this far because you want your article to be objective and not flowing with direct quotations like a book of quotes.
Press release writing is a wonderful way for promoting your services and products. Only bear in mind the rules of writing news to make it as effective as possible.
You can use your press release also when there are significant events coming up. Through this your customer will get an idea of how this event or update might be helpful for them. To establish your credibility you can also display a press release citing the receiving of an award.
Another important thing to note for making an effective press release is to make the article attractive to both the media as well as the general public to achieve a wholesome impact. A unique press release is not only unprejudiced but also conversational. Remember to coordinate the press release with the correct media. You would not like to waste your resources submitting your press release in an incorrect forum. This will only render you press release a failed attempt.
Do not forget that when you strategically and effectively use press release as a medium of publicity, you would be in a position to raise the return on what you invest. This will increase your authority in an unprecedented manner, beyond your imagination!
For more information on Press Release Writing and other internet marketing strategies visit http://TheInternetBusinessAuthority.com
Article Directory: Article Dashboard
Jan
6
What is Your Competition doing?
January 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Competition research is an important aspect of any business and if you think that it does not apply to your business, you are gravely mistaken.
Today’s competition would define the future of your business. Your business survival and growth is guided by competition in your market. If you say that a research of this kind is only for big companies who have access to right tools, then again you are wrong.More…
Is not your business a business for you? If it is then you need to do a research on your competition. If money is your concern then there are free tools available to internet marketer. In fact a simple research on your competition will take a little time and hardly any money.
Know Your Competitors: Before you commence your search, you need to know whom to search for. You must first know the competitors and then start your search.
Visit the major search engines and type in the sort of keywords or phrases that people would use to find your site. The search findings will show you the competitors your customers are likely to visit. Don’t just limit your search to the top search results, because many of your direct competitors may be ranked a lot lower than that.
Visit Their Websites: The easiest way to find out about your competitors is to visit their Web sites. When you are at their website, check them out for layout, content, web design and navigation.. Most importantly check the offers they are making. Can you make a better offer?
Learn their business design and see if that asks for changes in yours. For example what is their mechanism to capture email addresses, are they doing any upselling or is there any backend strategy? Are they able to retain their customers?
Sales process: How easy it is to buy something from their site. Can you improve upon that. Are their customers able to find and purchase products easily or it is a lengthy process. Can you make some improvements Make sure you keep an open mind as you search rival sites. After all, they could end up being associated partners. When you visit competitor sites look out for information that could influence your own online marketing strategy.
Advertising: Do people advertise on their sites. If they do, it could be worth posing as a potential advertiser to find out how much their advertising rates are. This will also enable you to discover other relevant information such as the number of visitors they have, where their target market is based, what age range they cater for and so on.
What Is Their Reputation: Visit forums and see how people talk about them. Both in positive and negative terms. Make a note to improve your own site functions.
Research Regularly: Remember that competitor research is an ongoing process and not one time deal. Keep checking regularly if any changes have been made in your competitors’ site in terms of strategy or design.
Study your notes you made while studying them and make match your site up to your competition.
Arun Pal Singh is an internet marketing consultant and web author who runs website http://www.homeforprofits.com to help online entrepreneurs with information and ready made products. Visit http://www.homeforprofits.com to find how his information can provide the leverage that your business needs to grow and expand.
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Jan
5
SEO By Owner in Three Easy Steps
January 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
You have two choices to consider when trying get your site ranked higher in search engines. You can hire a Search Engine Optimization Company that is an expert in the field or if you have some time, you can do it yourself.
Research your Keywords
Ask yourself what keywords you think someone might type in when searching for products you sell or services you provide. Though a keyword may be only one word it is usually a phrase made up of keywords. Phrases are more specific and will more than likely be what potential customers use when searching for products or services online.
After a quick brainstorming session write down all that you were able to come up with. Make sure to consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customers and don’t forget of alternative words that could be used (an example could be “new car Littleton”). Make sure to surf the websites of your competition to get more ideas until you can come up with a list in the neighborhood of 20 to 30.
Now you should take two keywords from your list that you feel potential customers will use most frequently. Take into consideration that popular keywords are also competitive keywords and harder to achieve higher ranking with. If your goal is to obtain a high ranking for the term “auto insurance”, the path to achieving it may be long. Try to make your keywords the ones that are most related to your business and not riddled with vagueness or extremely competitive. Make each phrase about two or three words in length like the previous example.
Now that we have your keywords we will move on to the next step.
Site Text
Your site text is made up of the wording that is on your web page. There is a phrase for search engines and it is content is king. Search engines love unique content and your keywords should be placed in key locations within the content so Google understands the relevance your site has to them. Also make sure that your copy reads well around them as it needs to make sense for your visitors who are most important.
Keywords can be placed in headings, at the top of pages, in bold or italics, used as link text for other pages of your site and in your title tag.
Add additional content after you are finished tuning up your webpage. Give more detailed descriptions of the products and services you offer. Provide a frequently asked questions page and pages of articles that pertain to your products or services.
With your design you should keep in mind that search engines cannot read images nearly as well as text. Sites that are made up with excessive flash or pictures really impede how well they can read the content of your site.
Link Building
A common way of thinking about links is that every link from another site that leads to yours is a vote for the popularity of your site. Every quality link you receive can improve your search rankings.
The quality of your inbound links is more vital than the quantity. The preferred and more valuable link is from sites that are relevant to your niche and with authority (highly regarded in the niche). A quality directory with relevant categories is another example. Just a few quality links with authority can have more value for your site than hundreds of lesser quality. Think of it like you do your personal business network. Both can have a strong effect on the success or failure of your business.
Take time to consider all the other relevant websites in your niche such as organizations, industry affiliates and non-competing companies. Send them a email introducing yourself, your products and services and explain how your website could benefit their visitors. Then politely suggest that they create a link to your website from theirs.
Record the Results
Over time you should watch and record your search engine rankings by doing a Google search for your chosen keywords to see where you rank. You can also monitor where your visitors are coming from by watching your hosting reports. Do this for each significant page of your website.
Continue to add to your websites content and increase the links to your website over time. This needs to be an ongoing effort for as long as you want visitors to your website.
As you continue to record the results of your efforts you should see the traffic increase and with that your sales. Know where your visitors are coming from so you can continually monitor your marketing efforts successes. Only by measuring it do you know where and how to improve it.
The Authority Business Directory is a vital resource in every online-marketing campaign. Begin your link building effort here by visiting our Submit URL page.
Article Directory: Article Dashboard

