Directories and SEO
The first thing that people often do when new to promoting their website is to pay a company $20-$30 to get them listed in hundreds of web directories. But what is a directory?
Directories are lists of sites, categorised and organised by separate topics. Each directory listing will contain a short description about the site. Unlike search engines that use software spiders (Google), directories are put together by human editors who approve the listings. Listings are often free but in some cases, pay for inclusion is offered for speedier and highlighted listings in directories such as Yahoo! The most valuable and probably the most difficult directory to get into is the Open Directory Project (known as DMOZ).
Before, spending your money on directory listings you need to consider two things.
The first is that companies submitting your website using software will often only get you a top level listing. In other words, they will not drill down into the sub niche which your website would more accurately sit.
Secondly, the search engines frown on a website suddenly getting hundreds of new links. They consider fast link building to be spamming and you may find that all your efforts come to nothing because of it. Best to ask the company you are using to spread the directory listings over four to six months which will be seen as more of an organic growth pattern.
So will you get any traffic from these directory sites? I can honestly say that I have never received a single visitor from a directory site. Frankly I don’t care because I don’t use the directories for traffic; I use it to promote my SEO Services business and the businesses of my clients.
Sunday, 28 December 2008
2009 – The Time to Open your Website Business
2009 – The Time to Open your Website Business
The news is full of news about worldwide recession, banking crisis and mass redundancies. Doom and gloom is all around and your instinct may be to hold on to what you have, reduce your outgoings and wait for a better day.
An alternative to consider is to be brave and to open your own internet based business. A website business can be as complicated or as simple as you like. It can cost the earth or cost virtually nothing. It can be a full time income or a part time income. It can replace your existing offline business or it can supplement it.
On top of everything, the internet is a great leveller because it is blind to the person behind the website. Whether you are old or young, black or white, gay or straight, disabled or able bodied, rich or poor, university educated or not: you can succeed online.
So why is 2009 a great time to open a website?
• According to Forrester research, over 70% of people looking for a new product or service start by searching online.
• It’s cheaper to buy online and we are in a world recession.
• Green issues have dictated that people travel less.
• It’s cheaper to open than almost any business.
Having helped dozens of people get going online I have two pieces of advice to give you based on my experience. Firstly, that the internet is not a route to instant riches. Just like any business, it takes time, effort and knowledge to succeed. Secondly, there are many businesses online that make money by selling you the latest ‘get rich quick’ scheme. Don’t spend your money unless you are sure that what you are buying is what you need to succeed.
When you have a website, you need to get traffic to visit it. My SEO Company website has articles and free tools to help you get going.
The news is full of news about worldwide recession, banking crisis and mass redundancies. Doom and gloom is all around and your instinct may be to hold on to what you have, reduce your outgoings and wait for a better day.
An alternative to consider is to be brave and to open your own internet based business. A website business can be as complicated or as simple as you like. It can cost the earth or cost virtually nothing. It can be a full time income or a part time income. It can replace your existing offline business or it can supplement it.
On top of everything, the internet is a great leveller because it is blind to the person behind the website. Whether you are old or young, black or white, gay or straight, disabled or able bodied, rich or poor, university educated or not: you can succeed online.
So why is 2009 a great time to open a website?
• According to Forrester research, over 70% of people looking for a new product or service start by searching online.
• It’s cheaper to buy online and we are in a world recession.
• Green issues have dictated that people travel less.
• It’s cheaper to open than almost any business.
Having helped dozens of people get going online I have two pieces of advice to give you based on my experience. Firstly, that the internet is not a route to instant riches. Just like any business, it takes time, effort and knowledge to succeed. Secondly, there are many businesses online that make money by selling you the latest ‘get rich quick’ scheme. Don’t spend your money unless you are sure that what you are buying is what you need to succeed.
When you have a website, you need to get traffic to visit it. My SEO Company website has articles and free tools to help you get going.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Seventeen SEO Tips
In this article I will share seventeen tips on how to improve your search engine rankings.
Cross-linking: Ensure that important pages within your website are linked to each other using the appropriate ‘anchor text’. Also make sure that if you own multiple websites that these are linked together. This will maximize the page rank of all your pages within each web site.
Take time to learn what sites link to your competitors. Use this information to surpass your competitors SEO efforts and gain better position within the search engines. To find out which sites are linking to your competitors, visit Yahoo! and enter, "link:" followed by the competitors' domain name I.E. link:www.yourcompetitor.com
Include a TITLE tag as the first META tag, directly after the HEAD tag. Use your most important keyword terms in the title tag but please try to avoid stop words such as (a, an, and, but, he, her, his, i, in, it, of, on, or, she, the, etc.) which are common words and characters ignored by some search engines to enhance the speed and relevancy of their search results.
Always Include a META DESCRIPTION tag, directly after the TITLE tag. Include the most important keyword phrase for the web page as close to the beginning of the description as is possible. This is usually the text that shows in the search engine results when you search.
Please include a site map with a links to all your pages. This will help search engines find and index all your pages.
Try to limit the number of links on a web page to a maximum of fifty. If you have more than fifty links limit them to your most important pages. Avoid link only pages.
Use one or more header tags in your main page body and include your most important keyword phrases particularly in the first paragraph to see if it's appropriate to be used as a description of your page. Many search engines utilize the first couple of sentences of the body text instead of the contents of the Meta description tag as the search results description.
Aim to achieve an overall keyword density of 1-3% and no more per page.
Write for humans and not for search engines. Do not repeat keywords or keyword phrases on a web page, as this is often considered ‘spam’ by search engines.
Try to achieve a minimum word count of three hundred and fifty and a maximum of seven hundred words on each page.
If possible, register a domain name using the exact keyword phrase you wish to be found for using hyphens to separate the keywords i.e. www.your-seo-services.co.uk
Name directories within your site after your keyword phrases, using hyphens or underscores to separate the keywords.
Name web pages after your most important keyword phrase. Separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores.
Name your images after your keyword phrases. Again, separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores. Only do this when it is an accurate representation of the keyword.
Try to use the longer or plural version of a keyword whenever possible. Some search engines will return search results that include keywords that extend beyond what you actually searched for.
Use some less common keywords in your main body text. These keywords have less competition in the search engines and your web page has a greater chance of being listed amongst the top results.
Never use font size #1 as the default text size. Many search engines will consider tiny text to be spamming. It's still OK to use some font size one text but not as the default.
Please feel free to check out my SEO Company website for more helpful tips and hints on search engine optimization.
Cross-linking: Ensure that important pages within your website are linked to each other using the appropriate ‘anchor text’. Also make sure that if you own multiple websites that these are linked together. This will maximize the page rank of all your pages within each web site.
Take time to learn what sites link to your competitors. Use this information to surpass your competitors SEO efforts and gain better position within the search engines. To find out which sites are linking to your competitors, visit Yahoo! and enter, "link:" followed by the competitors' domain name I.E. link:www.yourcompetitor.com
Include a TITLE tag as the first META tag, directly after the HEAD tag. Use your most important keyword terms in the title tag but please try to avoid stop words such as (a, an, and, but, he, her, his, i, in, it, of, on, or, she, the, etc.) which are common words and characters ignored by some search engines to enhance the speed and relevancy of their search results.
Always Include a META DESCRIPTION tag, directly after the TITLE tag. Include the most important keyword phrase for the web page as close to the beginning of the description as is possible. This is usually the text that shows in the search engine results when you search.
Please include a site map with a links to all your pages. This will help search engines find and index all your pages.
Try to limit the number of links on a web page to a maximum of fifty. If you have more than fifty links limit them to your most important pages. Avoid link only pages.
Use one or more header tags in your main page body and include your most important keyword phrases particularly in the first paragraph to see if it's appropriate to be used as a description of your page. Many search engines utilize the first couple of sentences of the body text instead of the contents of the Meta description tag as the search results description.
Aim to achieve an overall keyword density of 1-3% and no more per page.
Write for humans and not for search engines. Do not repeat keywords or keyword phrases on a web page, as this is often considered ‘spam’ by search engines.
Try to achieve a minimum word count of three hundred and fifty and a maximum of seven hundred words on each page.
If possible, register a domain name using the exact keyword phrase you wish to be found for using hyphens to separate the keywords i.e. www.your-seo-services.co.uk
Name directories within your site after your keyword phrases, using hyphens or underscores to separate the keywords.
Name web pages after your most important keyword phrase. Separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores.
Name your images after your keyword phrases. Again, separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores. Only do this when it is an accurate representation of the keyword.
Try to use the longer or plural version of a keyword whenever possible. Some search engines will return search results that include keywords that extend beyond what you actually searched for.
Use some less common keywords in your main body text. These keywords have less competition in the search engines and your web page has a greater chance of being listed amongst the top results.
Never use font size #1 as the default text size. Many search engines will consider tiny text to be spamming. It's still OK to use some font size one text but not as the default.
Please feel free to check out my SEO Company website for more helpful tips and hints on search engine optimization.
Friday, 26 December 2008
What Does Google Want?
What Does Google Want?
Twelve years ago it wouldn't have mattered at all what Google thought of your website. Now when it comes to online search, Google is the big beast in the jungle with 60%+ of the market and what they think is very important to your success.
In order to keep Google happy, SEO specialists and webmasters have to jump through many hoops to get a website seen. If you want to succeed with Google you have to try and master the majority of them.
There is now a large industry built around guessing and searching for these ranking factors. Asking what is it that Google wants? How does Google rank pages and keywords? How would Google want you to build your website?
For years, webmasters have been trying to figure things out without much help from Google at all. Many techniques have been dreamt up to crack the Google Code, many of them under the banner of Black-Hat. Black-Hat being a set of techniques which aim to fool the Google algorithm and cheat a website to search engine success.
In recent times, Googler’s Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye,have been honestly answering questions about what Google requires webmasters to do regarding their websites. The obvious questions being - What does Google want from me? What does Google expect from my site? How do I get ranked highly in Google search?
What is Google's Prime Directive?
After you have gone through all the Google SEO checkmarks, taken into account the quality of your content, factored in the credibility and authority of your site and your back-links, you are left with the following bombshell!
"Always think of your visitors first when creating any content for your website."
Obviously, anything as complicated as getting top rankings in Google can't be potted down to a single phrase. You must also do your homework and a reasonable place to start would be to read Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
So, the basics still have to be observed such as keyword research, page title, Meta descriptions in order to get ahead of the game. However, there is an argument to be counter-intuitive when it comes to your website content. Always write for the visitor and forget impressing the search engines with your keyword density could well be sound advice.
SEO Services
SEO Company
Twelve years ago it wouldn't have mattered at all what Google thought of your website. Now when it comes to online search, Google is the big beast in the jungle with 60%+ of the market and what they think is very important to your success.
In order to keep Google happy, SEO specialists and webmasters have to jump through many hoops to get a website seen. If you want to succeed with Google you have to try and master the majority of them.
There is now a large industry built around guessing and searching for these ranking factors. Asking what is it that Google wants? How does Google rank pages and keywords? How would Google want you to build your website?
For years, webmasters have been trying to figure things out without much help from Google at all. Many techniques have been dreamt up to crack the Google Code, many of them under the banner of Black-Hat. Black-Hat being a set of techniques which aim to fool the Google algorithm and cheat a website to search engine success.
In recent times, Googler’s Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye,have been honestly answering questions about what Google requires webmasters to do regarding their websites. The obvious questions being - What does Google want from me? What does Google expect from my site? How do I get ranked highly in Google search?
What is Google's Prime Directive?
After you have gone through all the Google SEO checkmarks, taken into account the quality of your content, factored in the credibility and authority of your site and your back-links, you are left with the following bombshell!
"Always think of your visitors first when creating any content for your website."
Obviously, anything as complicated as getting top rankings in Google can't be potted down to a single phrase. You must also do your homework and a reasonable place to start would be to read Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
So, the basics still have to be observed such as keyword research, page title, Meta descriptions in order to get ahead of the game. However, there is an argument to be counter-intuitive when it comes to your website content. Always write for the visitor and forget impressing the search engines with your keyword density could well be sound advice.
SEO Services
SEO Company
Monday, 22 December 2008
pros and cons of flash design
The Pros and Cons of Flash based Sites
OK it looks good but there is a problem. You will end up with a website that nobody ever finds. Why? Because if your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not rank well in search engines and there will be considerably less traffic heading to your site.
Flash sites have been a craze since the past few years and as Macromedia puts more great features into Flash we are certain that there will be many more flash sites around the Internet than at present. However, Flash based sites are considered by many to be bloated and unnecessary.
Here are the Pro’s
Interactivity
Flash's Action script opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and used Flash to create interactive features ranging from lively feedback forms to Flash-based games. This new level of interactivity leaves some visitors coming back for more.
A Standard Site
With Flash you do not have to worry about browser compatibility. No more worries about how a certain code displays differently in Internet Explorer and Firefox. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as long as the user has Flash Player installed.
Animation
In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in an efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based and therefore has smaller file sizes as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and much larger in size.
And now the Con’s
Flash player
People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor numbers will decrease because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. There is also extra work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.
Loading time
Users will have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might lose their patience and click the Back button.
Search Engine Friendliness
It isn’t search engine friendly and for this reason alone I would steer well clear of using Flash in abundance. Personally I do not use it at all but if I did it would be sparingly.
There is not much point having a great looking website that nobody finds!
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
OK it looks good but there is a problem. You will end up with a website that nobody ever finds. Why? Because if your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not rank well in search engines and there will be considerably less traffic heading to your site.
Flash sites have been a craze since the past few years and as Macromedia puts more great features into Flash we are certain that there will be many more flash sites around the Internet than at present. However, Flash based sites are considered by many to be bloated and unnecessary.
Here are the Pro’s
Interactivity
Flash's Action script opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and used Flash to create interactive features ranging from lively feedback forms to Flash-based games. This new level of interactivity leaves some visitors coming back for more.
A Standard Site
With Flash you do not have to worry about browser compatibility. No more worries about how a certain code displays differently in Internet Explorer and Firefox. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as long as the user has Flash Player installed.
Animation
In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in an efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based and therefore has smaller file sizes as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and much larger in size.
And now the Con’s
Flash player
People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor numbers will decrease because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. There is also extra work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.
Loading time
Users will have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might lose their patience and click the Back button.
Search Engine Friendliness
It isn’t search engine friendly and for this reason alone I would steer well clear of using Flash in abundance. Personally I do not use it at all but if I did it would be sparingly.
There is not much point having a great looking website that nobody finds!
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
The best and least used link building tactic.
The best and least used link building tactic.
You probably know that getting your website up the search engines is all about having a well designed website and establishing one way back links to it from other sites.
Most of the link-building strategies you will read about revolve around the industry staples of article writing, press releases, blogging, social bookmarking and directory submissions.
Believe me it takes a lot of time, effort and perseverance to actually see any results. Fortunately there is a much better way and that’s what this article is about. Getting large num¬bers of free, high page rank back links as easily and quickly as is possible. If you use the easy and simple method that I have outlined here that’s exactly what you will get and you will be surprised at how quick the results will be.
Now, this technique is not free and I usually pay around one hundred dollars per campaign.
So here it is; I pay someone to build me a screensaver or branded toolbar and then submit it to the free software directories for me of which there are hundreds. Doesn’t sound very exciting does it? Let me tell you why it is exciting and why you should consider using it.
So, basically you have the software built which is probably the easiest part and takes no time at all to do. You then have a thing called a “pad file” built by the same person. This pad file contains all the information about you and your software, including your URL which is the important bit. The pad file is then submitted to the free software directories.
The reason this method works so well is that the search engines look for the age of a site and the content therein as part of the importance they attach to links from the site. The vast majority of the software directories that will be listing your soft¬ware have been around for a very long time because software has been around the internet from the start. In the eyes of search engines that makes them authority sites and you will rarely find them with a page rank of less than PR4 and usually they rank from PR5 with quite a few sitting at PR6+.
Most importantly these sites want your software and to get your software they will provide a link back to your site. So you can have literally hundreds of links from high page rank “authority” sites pointing at your website.
As with everything you do to promote your site, keywords are of prime importance and part of the process is to name your software with the key words that you want to focus on. When someone put these keywords into Google the little Google robots go to the authority sites first. They pick up on the keywords in your software and follow that link right back to you. Voila! You end up at the top of the pile.
Not only are these great quality links but they are also links that will be there for a long while which means you will be at the top of the heap for a good long time. The more software you submit, and there is no limit to how much you are allowed to submit, the more back links you get back.
You can also tweak the original software, list it with some new keywords or give it a different version number and submit it again.
So where do you this work done? Simply, visit Elance.com and put it out to tender. This is free, quick and easy to do. Good Luck!
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
You probably know that getting your website up the search engines is all about having a well designed website and establishing one way back links to it from other sites.
Most of the link-building strategies you will read about revolve around the industry staples of article writing, press releases, blogging, social bookmarking and directory submissions.
Believe me it takes a lot of time, effort and perseverance to actually see any results. Fortunately there is a much better way and that’s what this article is about. Getting large num¬bers of free, high page rank back links as easily and quickly as is possible. If you use the easy and simple method that I have outlined here that’s exactly what you will get and you will be surprised at how quick the results will be.
Now, this technique is not free and I usually pay around one hundred dollars per campaign.
So here it is; I pay someone to build me a screensaver or branded toolbar and then submit it to the free software directories for me of which there are hundreds. Doesn’t sound very exciting does it? Let me tell you why it is exciting and why you should consider using it.
So, basically you have the software built which is probably the easiest part and takes no time at all to do. You then have a thing called a “pad file” built by the same person. This pad file contains all the information about you and your software, including your URL which is the important bit. The pad file is then submitted to the free software directories.
The reason this method works so well is that the search engines look for the age of a site and the content therein as part of the importance they attach to links from the site. The vast majority of the software directories that will be listing your soft¬ware have been around for a very long time because software has been around the internet from the start. In the eyes of search engines that makes them authority sites and you will rarely find them with a page rank of less than PR4 and usually they rank from PR5 with quite a few sitting at PR6+.
Most importantly these sites want your software and to get your software they will provide a link back to your site. So you can have literally hundreds of links from high page rank “authority” sites pointing at your website.
As with everything you do to promote your site, keywords are of prime importance and part of the process is to name your software with the key words that you want to focus on. When someone put these keywords into Google the little Google robots go to the authority sites first. They pick up on the keywords in your software and follow that link right back to you. Voila! You end up at the top of the pile.
Not only are these great quality links but they are also links that will be there for a long while which means you will be at the top of the heap for a good long time. The more software you submit, and there is no limit to how much you are allowed to submit, the more back links you get back.
You can also tweak the original software, list it with some new keywords or give it a different version number and submit it again.
So where do you this work done? Simply, visit Elance.com and put it out to tender. This is free, quick and easy to do. Good Luck!
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
Monday, 15 December 2008
SEO for the Average Joe
SEO for the Average Joe
There are billions of websites and very few of them make money. In fact most of them never get any visitors at all.
Why do they exist? Mainly, because well meaning folks decided that they could make a living from the internet and decided to buy a ready made site or have one built.
Within a month or two the despondency sets in because no sales are being made and within six months the website is left unloved and abandoned in cyber space.
“Build it and they will come” is a famous quote from the movie ‘Field of Dreams’. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the internet.
In this article, we are going to have a look at some of the basic ways that you can get your site noticed by the search engines. One of these methods you will decide to ignore because it seems the hardest work. Unfortunately it is also the most important by a country mile!
Let’s begin with Keywords. Keywords are those words and phrases that people use to find your content, product or service on the internet. Spend a lot of time on this because if your site is built around the correct words you are a long way down the road to success. The Google Keyword tool is free and a good starting point for you.
Next, let’s understand that the search engines do not send humans to your website in order to understand what you do. They send software that analyses the words you use and the importance of them within your site.
What does this mean? It means that a web address of ‘chicago-cabs.com’ is likely to perform better than MiguelsCabCompany.com who just happens to be in Chicago.
If the website uses the words ‘Chicago Cabs’ liberally throughout then it is likely to be picked up for what it is. Make it blindingly obvious what your website does and you will benefit.
Link-building is next and the second most important element of getting a site found. A link from another website to yours is a vote of confidence. A vote from a busy and established site or web page is an even bigger vote of confidence.
Where do you get links from? Personally I would start by finding a reputable link building company and pay them a couple of hundred bucks to get the ball rolling. Make sure that the link building takes place over a period of four to six months and not instantly. Instant links are a bad sign for search engines and it can have a negative effect on your rankings.
Now for the most important component of a successful site and the one that nine out of ten readers will ignore and that is to add new content to your website regularly. Search engines love sites that add new content consistently and will prefer them to those that never change.
Ask yourself this. Why is Lyndon bothering to write this article I am reading? The answer is that this article will produce lots of links and traffic for my business.
You see, I don’t just add a page to my website. I also offer my new content out via a RSS feed. I publish it on sites like this and in turn it is re-published on other sites. I also add it to a blog I set up in ten minutes at Blogger.com. In other words I write a simple article and then use it in many different ways to get links and get traffic.
To me, writing comes easy but to you it may not. A visit to a site like elance.com where for a very small amount of money you can get original articles written may be the solution. Notice that I mentioned ‘original’ content. Copied and pasted articles have no value apart from to annoy the reader and alienate the search engines you are trying to impress.
Lastly, please be patient and stick at it. The parable of the Rabbit and the Hare applies totally on the internet.
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
There are billions of websites and very few of them make money. In fact most of them never get any visitors at all.
Why do they exist? Mainly, because well meaning folks decided that they could make a living from the internet and decided to buy a ready made site or have one built.
Within a month or two the despondency sets in because no sales are being made and within six months the website is left unloved and abandoned in cyber space.
“Build it and they will come” is a famous quote from the movie ‘Field of Dreams’. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the internet.
In this article, we are going to have a look at some of the basic ways that you can get your site noticed by the search engines. One of these methods you will decide to ignore because it seems the hardest work. Unfortunately it is also the most important by a country mile!
Let’s begin with Keywords. Keywords are those words and phrases that people use to find your content, product or service on the internet. Spend a lot of time on this because if your site is built around the correct words you are a long way down the road to success. The Google Keyword tool is free and a good starting point for you.
Next, let’s understand that the search engines do not send humans to your website in order to understand what you do. They send software that analyses the words you use and the importance of them within your site.
What does this mean? It means that a web address of ‘chicago-cabs.com’ is likely to perform better than MiguelsCabCompany.com who just happens to be in Chicago.
If the website uses the words ‘Chicago Cabs’ liberally throughout then it is likely to be picked up for what it is. Make it blindingly obvious what your website does and you will benefit.
Link-building is next and the second most important element of getting a site found. A link from another website to yours is a vote of confidence. A vote from a busy and established site or web page is an even bigger vote of confidence.
Where do you get links from? Personally I would start by finding a reputable link building company and pay them a couple of hundred bucks to get the ball rolling. Make sure that the link building takes place over a period of four to six months and not instantly. Instant links are a bad sign for search engines and it can have a negative effect on your rankings.
Now for the most important component of a successful site and the one that nine out of ten readers will ignore and that is to add new content to your website regularly. Search engines love sites that add new content consistently and will prefer them to those that never change.
Ask yourself this. Why is Lyndon bothering to write this article I am reading? The answer is that this article will produce lots of links and traffic for my business.
You see, I don’t just add a page to my website. I also offer my new content out via a RSS feed. I publish it on sites like this and in turn it is re-published on other sites. I also add it to a blog I set up in ten minutes at Blogger.com. In other words I write a simple article and then use it in many different ways to get links and get traffic.
To me, writing comes easy but to you it may not. A visit to a site like elance.com where for a very small amount of money you can get original articles written may be the solution. Notice that I mentioned ‘original’ content. Copied and pasted articles have no value apart from to annoy the reader and alienate the search engines you are trying to impress.
Lastly, please be patient and stick at it. The parable of the Rabbit and the Hare applies totally on the internet.
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
SEO Friendly Copywriting for the Web
SEO Friendly Copywriting for the Web
Copywriting for a website is dissimilar than for any other media because the mindset of those who are going to be reading is different. SEO Friendly Copywriting makes it even trickier because you are asked to consider writing in a style that suits the search engines but not the reader.
You, know the type of thing I am talking about ‘pet rabbits are fantastic for children because pet rabbits are pretty and you can meet new friends who also have pet rabbits’ etc. It might make your webpage dynamite for the search engines but its total garbage to a human being.
A case in point is my own SEO services website which I write for regularly. I do not follow the SEO rules manual and just try to write naturally. Is my website optimized perfectly for search engines; No! Is it a place people regularly visit because the content is interesting; Yes!
Anyway, back to the copywriting-
Because most web pages will be found via a search engine, the person searching will be looking either for you or another business like you. This puts them totally in control because they will be focused on finding a piece of information, product or service without much delay.
Questions that visitors might ask themselves quite quickly are - “Is this to the right place?” and “will I find what I’m looking for here?”
It is absolutely vital that you answer these questions in both your headline and any sub-headlines you may have. You need to convince the first time visitor that they are at the right place as soon as possible and that they should continue to read on. To make this happen, your text needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some of the points you should consider when copywriting for the web.
Keep your website copy short and simple
Unless a visitor has been directed to a specific page on your website they will typically only read one or two lines of the text. So the longer your website text is, the less likely they will hang around to read it.
Keeping your copy simple is as important as keeping it short. It is important that website visitors are able to understand what has been written without a second reading.
In most cases, you should strive to convey one key idea effectively in the first two lines of writing. Any more and you will start to see visitors click away from the page.
Obviously, a two sentence introduction will not convey a full message and so providing them with a link to another page of your site with more information is a perfectly valid tactic.
What do I do with long copy?
If you do include longer copy, then organize it for the visitor to navigate easily. Providing them with useful headings, sub headings and bulleted lists helps greatly in increasing the stickiness of a page.
Not all the visitors to your website will read long pieces in their entirety. So write copy that is easily skimmed and enables them to read just the parts they are interested in.
Long copy should always be as easy to read and navigate as short copy. If you wouldn’t read it yourself then why should your visitors?
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
Copywriting for a website is dissimilar than for any other media because the mindset of those who are going to be reading is different. SEO Friendly Copywriting makes it even trickier because you are asked to consider writing in a style that suits the search engines but not the reader.
You, know the type of thing I am talking about ‘pet rabbits are fantastic for children because pet rabbits are pretty and you can meet new friends who also have pet rabbits’ etc. It might make your webpage dynamite for the search engines but its total garbage to a human being.
A case in point is my own SEO services website which I write for regularly. I do not follow the SEO rules manual and just try to write naturally. Is my website optimized perfectly for search engines; No! Is it a place people regularly visit because the content is interesting; Yes!
Anyway, back to the copywriting-
Because most web pages will be found via a search engine, the person searching will be looking either for you or another business like you. This puts them totally in control because they will be focused on finding a piece of information, product or service without much delay.
Questions that visitors might ask themselves quite quickly are - “Is this to the right place?” and “will I find what I’m looking for here?”
It is absolutely vital that you answer these questions in both your headline and any sub-headlines you may have. You need to convince the first time visitor that they are at the right place as soon as possible and that they should continue to read on. To make this happen, your text needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some of the points you should consider when copywriting for the web.
Keep your website copy short and simple
Unless a visitor has been directed to a specific page on your website they will typically only read one or two lines of the text. So the longer your website text is, the less likely they will hang around to read it.
Keeping your copy simple is as important as keeping it short. It is important that website visitors are able to understand what has been written without a second reading.
In most cases, you should strive to convey one key idea effectively in the first two lines of writing. Any more and you will start to see visitors click away from the page.
Obviously, a two sentence introduction will not convey a full message and so providing them with a link to another page of your site with more information is a perfectly valid tactic.
What do I do with long copy?
If you do include longer copy, then organize it for the visitor to navigate easily. Providing them with useful headings, sub headings and bulleted lists helps greatly in increasing the stickiness of a page.
Not all the visitors to your website will read long pieces in their entirety. So write copy that is easily skimmed and enables them to read just the parts they are interested in.
Long copy should always be as easy to read and navigate as short copy. If you wouldn’t read it yourself then why should your visitors?
SEO LEEDS
SEO Leeds
LEEDS SEO
Leeds SEO
SEO SERVICES LEEDS
SEO Services Leeds
SEO COMPANY LEEDS
SEO Company Leeds
SEO COMPANY
SEO Company
SEO SERVICES
SEO Services
SEO TRAINING
SEO Company
SEO FRIENDLY WEB DESIGN
SEO Company
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
How to Get Page One of Google in Five Weeks!
How to Get Page One of Google in Five Weeks!
I set out three months ago to debunk the myth that despite what you do to promote your website; Google will ignore your website for at least six months due to the ‘Google Sandbox’ effect.
Having been a SEO practitioner for years working with existing clients, I new this was not true and decided to prove my point when I Launched my own SEO services website.
Five weeks from launch and I am page two of Google for three of my terms and page one for one of my terms. I full expect to be in the top three positions in Google for all of my terms inside another six weeks.
So how did I do this magic trick? There was no magic, just a little knowledge and lots of hard work. I did not use any illegal or dubious practices; I used Google’s own advice to webmasters to achieve my goals.
In brief, this is what I did:
• I chose my keywords and made sure that my website reflected these words in the content and in the Meta descriptions. Unless you make it easy for Google to know what you do for a living you will struggle.
• My main keywords were SEO Services and SEO Company, but knowing the competition for these is strong, I decided to put my home town of Leeds in the mix. The potential traffic from Leeds alone could be lucrative and so SEO Leeds, Leeds SEO, SEO Services Leeds and SEO Company Leeds became my target.
• I had a new page built on my website which had all the usual menu options but I themed it for Leeds. The page is SEO Leeds if you want to look.
• Every week I added ten new articles to my site and had my hyperlinks to my other main pages at the bottom. Google loves fresh content more than anything and the internal linking between pages is important for SEO.
• I added a RSS feed to my site and then submitted it to RSS Mountain and other RSS directories. This gave a link back to my website and allowed my new content to be picked up worldwide.
• Every new article (like this one) was submitted to the major article sites and within the text I embedded my anchor text link. In this case it’s obviously the SEO Leeds hyperlink. Article sites get you links, visitors and also the possibility of more links by being published on other websites.
• I opened a blog at Blogger.com and deposited the article again. I then visited pingomatic.com and publicized the new post to the blogging world.
• Submitted my site to a couple of hundred directory sites via a cheap piece of widely available software.
• Bought a good piece of software from G-Lock that finds blogs on any theme and lists them in page rank order. By dividing the number of posts into the page rank I decided which sites to go to and leave a comment with my back-link. Because Google loves blogs, this has been a superb way of raising my visibility. Make sure that you only visit the ‘do follow’ blogs.
As I write, I only have 297 links showing in Yahoo! but they are good quality links rather than the spammed dross which is quite often the norm.
In a nutshell, I guess the secret to my success is to keep adding new content to your website as regularly as possible and then use the new content in as many ways as possible.
No short cuts, no unethical maneuvers, just a focus on my goal, a little knowledge and lots of hard work will do it for anyone.
I set out three months ago to debunk the myth that despite what you do to promote your website; Google will ignore your website for at least six months due to the ‘Google Sandbox’ effect.
Having been a SEO practitioner for years working with existing clients, I new this was not true and decided to prove my point when I Launched my own SEO services website.
Five weeks from launch and I am page two of Google for three of my terms and page one for one of my terms. I full expect to be in the top three positions in Google for all of my terms inside another six weeks.
So how did I do this magic trick? There was no magic, just a little knowledge and lots of hard work. I did not use any illegal or dubious practices; I used Google’s own advice to webmasters to achieve my goals.
In brief, this is what I did:
• I chose my keywords and made sure that my website reflected these words in the content and in the Meta descriptions. Unless you make it easy for Google to know what you do for a living you will struggle.
• My main keywords were SEO Services and SEO Company, but knowing the competition for these is strong, I decided to put my home town of Leeds in the mix. The potential traffic from Leeds alone could be lucrative and so SEO Leeds, Leeds SEO, SEO Services Leeds and SEO Company Leeds became my target.
• I had a new page built on my website which had all the usual menu options but I themed it for Leeds. The page is SEO Leeds if you want to look.
• Every week I added ten new articles to my site and had my hyperlinks to my other main pages at the bottom. Google loves fresh content more than anything and the internal linking between pages is important for SEO.
• I added a RSS feed to my site and then submitted it to RSS Mountain and other RSS directories. This gave a link back to my website and allowed my new content to be picked up worldwide.
• Every new article (like this one) was submitted to the major article sites and within the text I embedded my anchor text link. In this case it’s obviously the SEO Leeds hyperlink. Article sites get you links, visitors and also the possibility of more links by being published on other websites.
• I opened a blog at Blogger.com and deposited the article again. I then visited pingomatic.com and publicized the new post to the blogging world.
• Submitted my site to a couple of hundred directory sites via a cheap piece of widely available software.
• Bought a good piece of software from G-Lock that finds blogs on any theme and lists them in page rank order. By dividing the number of posts into the page rank I decided which sites to go to and leave a comment with my back-link. Because Google loves blogs, this has been a superb way of raising my visibility. Make sure that you only visit the ‘do follow’ blogs.
As I write, I only have 297 links showing in Yahoo! but they are good quality links rather than the spammed dross which is quite often the norm.
In a nutshell, I guess the secret to my success is to keep adding new content to your website as regularly as possible and then use the new content in as many ways as possible.
No short cuts, no unethical maneuvers, just a focus on my goal, a little knowledge and lots of hard work will do it for anyone.
Monday, 8 December 2008
Using Directories for SEO Gain
Using Directories for SEO Gain
There are two kinds of internet based directory - General and Niche.
General directories include that run by Yahoo which is vast but powerful in terms of SEO (or is it?). The reason I ask is that Google which used to take enormous interest in who was in the Yahoo directory, has now decided to give zero value for links which are paid for. The trouble is that despite what they say, Google still seems to give big brownie marks to websites listed in Yahoo! All I can say, dear reader, is that at $299 just to be considered for the directory, you better discount the Google SEO value and just look at the traffic it can drive as a listing. Also, Google only has half the searches and so it does have value to Google competitors which by the way include Yahoo itself!
For the record, my own SEO Services Company, does have a Yahoo directory listing.
Niche directories, as the name says, focus on much smaller market segments and can have a better SEO value because of it. Why, because links back to your website from another are always useful but links back from a website within the same market sector are very valuable indeed because of the relevancy to your own website.
SEO through directories has got a bit of a bad name recently, simply because so many directories have sprung up for this purpose alone. Having stated that, I have customers who have benefited greatly from this relatively inexpensive SEO tactic.
Remember not to sign up to directories in bulk on day one. Spread the work over four to six months and get the best long term return for your actions. Better still, why not get a specialist firm to do this for you?
What you are looking for is a manual submission to the directories. If not then you will automatically default to the 'top level' catagory rather than the specific catagory you should be in.
Not all directories have 'do follow' links and not all directories are recognised by the search engines. Some are seen as 'spammy' and discounted. Regardless of this, you should plough ahead and get registered with as many as possible is my advice.
SEO Leeds
SEO Bradford
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
Pay Per Click Marketing
There are two kinds of internet based directory - General and Niche.
General directories include that run by Yahoo which is vast but powerful in terms of SEO (or is it?). The reason I ask is that Google which used to take enormous interest in who was in the Yahoo directory, has now decided to give zero value for links which are paid for. The trouble is that despite what they say, Google still seems to give big brownie marks to websites listed in Yahoo! All I can say, dear reader, is that at $299 just to be considered for the directory, you better discount the Google SEO value and just look at the traffic it can drive as a listing. Also, Google only has half the searches and so it does have value to Google competitors which by the way include Yahoo itself!
For the record, my own SEO Services Company, does have a Yahoo directory listing.
Niche directories, as the name says, focus on much smaller market segments and can have a better SEO value because of it. Why, because links back to your website from another are always useful but links back from a website within the same market sector are very valuable indeed because of the relevancy to your own website.
SEO through directories has got a bit of a bad name recently, simply because so many directories have sprung up for this purpose alone. Having stated that, I have customers who have benefited greatly from this relatively inexpensive SEO tactic.
Remember not to sign up to directories in bulk on day one. Spread the work over four to six months and get the best long term return for your actions. Better still, why not get a specialist firm to do this for you?
What you are looking for is a manual submission to the directories. If not then you will automatically default to the 'top level' catagory rather than the specific catagory you should be in.
Not all directories have 'do follow' links and not all directories are recognised by the search engines. Some are seen as 'spammy' and discounted. Regardless of this, you should plough ahead and get registered with as many as possible is my advice.
SEO Leeds
SEO Bradford
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
Pay Per Click Marketing
Sunday, 7 December 2008
How to Make the Most of your Website Content
How to Make the Most of your Website Content
Last night I was sat with an old friend of mine talking about his website and listened to his tale of woe that he cannot seem to increase his visitor levels. The reason he talked to me was that I run a SEO (search engine optimisation) company and so considered an authority.
Now I am not going to give you all the advice about SEO that I gave him simply because I write about this stuff all the time. What I am going to write about is how to make the most of what you have already got.
If you have not bought into the idea that producing regular content is important to the success of your website (I know it does not suit every website) then please don’t waste your time reading this article.
If you have bought into the idea then let’s get down to basics and talk about what you do with it.
Back to my friend who happens to be a very good writer. His business is reviewing the latest gadgets and electronic toys that come on the market. Currently he publishes them to his website that gets around one thousand hits per week.
The obvious move for him apart from building a following on the social media sites is to distribute the content through an RSS feed and through a blog. Now please don’t stop reading because it sounds like hard work because it’s not. There is some work to set things up but it is far outweighed by the benefits.
You need to get a RSS subscription available from your website if you do not have one. This will cost you perhaps £200 ($300) to do via your friendly neighbourhood webmaster. Once done, try to add a new piece of content at least twice per week if you can. Now visit RSS-Specifications and you will find a list of RSS directories to submit your feed to. Take a half day of your usual work and go through the slog of submitting your RSS feeds. Now every time that you publish new content, it will appear on the RSS directory websites ready to be picked up by millions of content hungry websites and individuals.
For blogs, I suggest you add one to your own site but a close (and free) second is blogger
which is owned by Google. It takes about thirty minutes to set it up and make it look good. Publish your content to the blog and then visit RSS-Specifications again for the list of blog directories to submit to. Take the other half day and repeat the slog of submitting.
Voila! You are still producing one piece of content but you have increased the chance of it being picked up by millions of a percent.
SEO Leeds
SEO Bradford
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
Pay Per Click Marketing
Last night I was sat with an old friend of mine talking about his website and listened to his tale of woe that he cannot seem to increase his visitor levels. The reason he talked to me was that I run a SEO (search engine optimisation) company and so considered an authority.
Now I am not going to give you all the advice about SEO that I gave him simply because I write about this stuff all the time. What I am going to write about is how to make the most of what you have already got.
If you have not bought into the idea that producing regular content is important to the success of your website (I know it does not suit every website) then please don’t waste your time reading this article.
If you have bought into the idea then let’s get down to basics and talk about what you do with it.
Back to my friend who happens to be a very good writer. His business is reviewing the latest gadgets and electronic toys that come on the market. Currently he publishes them to his website that gets around one thousand hits per week.
The obvious move for him apart from building a following on the social media sites is to distribute the content through an RSS feed and through a blog. Now please don’t stop reading because it sounds like hard work because it’s not. There is some work to set things up but it is far outweighed by the benefits.
You need to get a RSS subscription available from your website if you do not have one. This will cost you perhaps £200 ($300) to do via your friendly neighbourhood webmaster. Once done, try to add a new piece of content at least twice per week if you can. Now visit RSS-Specifications and you will find a list of RSS directories to submit your feed to. Take a half day of your usual work and go through the slog of submitting your RSS feeds. Now every time that you publish new content, it will appear on the RSS directory websites ready to be picked up by millions of content hungry websites and individuals.
For blogs, I suggest you add one to your own site but a close (and free) second is blogger
which is owned by Google. It takes about thirty minutes to set it up and make it look good. Publish your content to the blog and then visit RSS-Specifications again for the list of blog directories to submit to. Take the other half day and repeat the slog of submitting.
Voila! You are still producing one piece of content but you have increased the chance of it being picked up by millions of a percent.
SEO Leeds
SEO Bradford
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
Pay Per Click Marketing
4 SEO Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back
4 SEO Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back
Many successful websites depend on visitors returning in order to boost revenue. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to your site, the more trust they have in it. Here are a few ways to get them returning
1) Update your site frequently with fresh content
This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors. It is also the one most ignored because it takes time. Search Engines love fresh content and a bonus beyond returning visitors is a boost in the search engine rankings.
2) Start a forum or chat-room
When you start a forum or chat-room, you are giving your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers. Build a sense of community and your visitors will return regularly.
3) Begin a Blog
Keep an online blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself and your company. People are curious and they will keep their eyes glued to the screen if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build credibility by showing there is a real live, breathing person behind the website.
4) Offer a RSS feed
An RSS feed simply picks up any new stories on your website and shows it to your RSS subscribers whether they are on your website or not. In other words you are pro-actively talking to your potential clients and asking them to visit rather than waiting for them to decide to visit. RSS is easy, cheap and simple to set up.
SEO Bradford
SEO Leeds
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
SEO Links
Pay Per Click Marketing
Many successful websites depend on visitors returning in order to boost revenue. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to your site, the more trust they have in it. Here are a few ways to get them returning
1) Update your site frequently with fresh content
This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors. It is also the one most ignored because it takes time. Search Engines love fresh content and a bonus beyond returning visitors is a boost in the search engine rankings.
2) Start a forum or chat-room
When you start a forum or chat-room, you are giving your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers. Build a sense of community and your visitors will return regularly.
3) Begin a Blog
Keep an online blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself and your company. People are curious and they will keep their eyes glued to the screen if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build credibility by showing there is a real live, breathing person behind the website.
4) Offer a RSS feed
An RSS feed simply picks up any new stories on your website and shows it to your RSS subscribers whether they are on your website or not. In other words you are pro-actively talking to your potential clients and asking them to visit rather than waiting for them to decide to visit. RSS is easy, cheap and simple to set up.
SEO Bradford
SEO Leeds
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
SEO Links
Pay Per Click Marketing
Friday, 5 December 2008
5 Ways to Improve Sales through Your Website
The more visitors you get to your website the more sales you get. True, but there is a lot you can do when they arrive to increase your conversion ratio substantially
1. The first method is to put your personal touch into your sales messages. Who wants to be sold to by an impersonal stranger? Convince your audience that you are friendly and trying to help and they will be convinced to buy your products. Many websites starting out do nothing to monetize the site initially, preferring instead to build up the content and get a following for the quality of the advice before trying to sell.
2. My second method is to publish testimonials, comments and case studies from your existing customers. When visitors see testimonials on your website it gives them more confidence to buy from you.
3. Use a visual representation of the customer need that your product delivers against. A simple flowchart will often get a message across quicker than a hundred words. As Rod Stewart once sang “every picture tells a story don’t it”.
4. Offer bonuses to accompany the products you sell. Everyone loves a bargain particularly when you make it time bound in order to get them to move quickly.
5. Always ask for the sale! Give clear instructions on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").
SEO Bradford
SEO Leeds
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
SEO Links
Pay Per Click Marketing
The more visitors you get to your website the more sales you get. True, but there is a lot you can do when they arrive to increase your conversion ratio substantially
1. The first method is to put your personal touch into your sales messages. Who wants to be sold to by an impersonal stranger? Convince your audience that you are friendly and trying to help and they will be convinced to buy your products. Many websites starting out do nothing to monetize the site initially, preferring instead to build up the content and get a following for the quality of the advice before trying to sell.
2. My second method is to publish testimonials, comments and case studies from your existing customers. When visitors see testimonials on your website it gives them more confidence to buy from you.
3. Use a visual representation of the customer need that your product delivers against. A simple flowchart will often get a message across quicker than a hundred words. As Rod Stewart once sang “every picture tells a story don’t it”.
4. Offer bonuses to accompany the products you sell. Everyone loves a bargain particularly when you make it time bound in order to get them to move quickly.
5. Always ask for the sale! Give clear instructions on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").
SEO Bradford
SEO Leeds
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
SEO Links
Pay Per Click Marketing
Thursday, 4 December 2008
Article Marketing for SEO
Article SEO is a lot like SEO for a website, but a bit less complicated. There are some things you can do to make your articles stand out more. Here some hints to help you optimize your articles better:
• Include your keyword in the first three words of your article title
• Make sure your primary keyword is in the first and last sentence of your article
• Sprinkle your keyword throughout your article on an average of one mention per paragraph
• Use lists to pare down your word count and enhance the visual look of your article
• Bold or italicize important keyword-based text sparingly and moderately
• If possible, use one or two instances of anchor text in your article
• Break your article into sections and give each section a keyword-based subhead
• Add title attributes to your anchor text tags
Make sure that you do everything you can do to improve your article’s SEO. That will increase its publishing worth as well and the more your articles are published the more likely you will build inbound links to your important content.
Personally, I love this way of generating traffic and links because it works. In my opinion you will get a better return from ezine articles than from any other article website (there are hundreds). I submit my articles to fifteen different article directories. Each article is a slight variation on the theme with a different heading and sub heading.
What do I get from it? Loads! I get valuable back-links plus I get visitors plus and also my articles picked up and published on other sites which in turn equals more back-links.
It really pays to be creative. Please do not copy other peoples work because you will get found out and penalized. Although this may prove difficult to start with, it is a skill you can learn. Remember that the internet search engines reward regular and original content production. Just do it and see what I mean.
SEO Leeds
SEO Bradford
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
• Include your keyword in the first three words of your article title
• Make sure your primary keyword is in the first and last sentence of your article
• Sprinkle your keyword throughout your article on an average of one mention per paragraph
• Use lists to pare down your word count and enhance the visual look of your article
• Bold or italicize important keyword-based text sparingly and moderately
• If possible, use one or two instances of anchor text in your article
• Break your article into sections and give each section a keyword-based subhead
• Add title attributes to your anchor text tags
Make sure that you do everything you can do to improve your article’s SEO. That will increase its publishing worth as well and the more your articles are published the more likely you will build inbound links to your important content.
Personally, I love this way of generating traffic and links because it works. In my opinion you will get a better return from ezine articles than from any other article website (there are hundreds). I submit my articles to fifteen different article directories. Each article is a slight variation on the theme with a different heading and sub heading.
What do I get from it? Loads! I get valuable back-links plus I get visitors plus and also my articles picked up and published on other sites which in turn equals more back-links.
It really pays to be creative. Please do not copy other peoples work because you will get found out and penalized. Although this may prove difficult to start with, it is a skill you can learn. Remember that the internet search engines reward regular and original content production. Just do it and see what I mean.
SEO Leeds
SEO Bradford
SEO Company
SEO Services
SEO Training
Saturday, 29 November 2008
A New Way to Get SEO links
New Way to Get SEO links
OK, we all know the main ways to get SEO links through directories, articles, blogs etc but here is a new way that might add some value. I am not claiming that this is anything more than a small, niche activity but it might help your SEO efforts a little.
What I am talking about is using Google Notebook to feature anchor text links back to your website.
I created my own Google Notebook and published it. In the notebook I put anchor text links back to key pages in my website.
To get my notebook indexed by the search engines I found half a dozen ‘do follow’ blogs and pasted my Google Notebook into the URL field
My guess is that this will not help you much with Google but I am reasonably confident it will work for Yahoo! and MSN.
When creating your Google notebook, you can add a user’s profile. In the profile you can talk about yourself and upload photos. But the great thing is that you can also add as many links to your profile as you want and the links will be ‘do follow’. This is the link to my profile.
So, here’s an opportunity for some additional ‘Do Follow’ links to move your website higher up the rankings.
If you are wondering what an anchor text link is, this is an example for you. Rather than put ‘click here’ when inviting people to my website I use the actual words that have a SEO value in the search engines. Therefore a good one for me is SEO company in Leeds where my business is based.
OK, we all know the main ways to get SEO links through directories, articles, blogs etc but here is a new way that might add some value. I am not claiming that this is anything more than a small, niche activity but it might help your SEO efforts a little.
What I am talking about is using Google Notebook to feature anchor text links back to your website.
I created my own Google Notebook and published it. In the notebook I put anchor text links back to key pages in my website.
To get my notebook indexed by the search engines I found half a dozen ‘do follow’ blogs and pasted my Google Notebook into the URL field
My guess is that this will not help you much with Google but I am reasonably confident it will work for Yahoo! and MSN.
When creating your Google notebook, you can add a user’s profile. In the profile you can talk about yourself and upload photos. But the great thing is that you can also add as many links to your profile as you want and the links will be ‘do follow’. This is the link to my profile.
So, here’s an opportunity for some additional ‘Do Follow’ links to move your website higher up the rankings.
If you are wondering what an anchor text link is, this is an example for you. Rather than put ‘click here’ when inviting people to my website I use the actual words that have a SEO value in the search engines. Therefore a good one for me is SEO company in Leeds where my business is based.
Friday, 28 November 2008
Google Links - The Ten Commandments
Google Links - The Ten Commandments
Following on from the Ten Commandments of SEO, here are some more detailed dos and don’ts for link building
1. Write interesting content geared towards humans and not robots.
2. Find and replace broken links and incorrect HTML coding.
3. Keep the links on a given page to a small number. I recommend less than seventy.
4. Avoid hidden text or hidden links. They are cleverer than you and I.
5. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines. You will get found out and penalized.
6. Don’t create multiple pages with substantially duplicate content. For instance the same page but with a different town mentioned on each
7. Never participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking
8. Avoid getting valueless links from unrelated websites. Get links from sites with a theme similar to yours (blogs are great)
9. Avoid getting links from low Page Rank pages with loads of outgoing links
10. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t get involved with anything that will get your site banned.
You can win the rankings race with great content and regular honest activity. Short cuts do not exist apart from in the heads of the SEO propeller heads.
For more of the same please visit my seo services website
Following on from the Ten Commandments of SEO, here are some more detailed dos and don’ts for link building
1. Write interesting content geared towards humans and not robots.
2. Find and replace broken links and incorrect HTML coding.
3. Keep the links on a given page to a small number. I recommend less than seventy.
4. Avoid hidden text or hidden links. They are cleverer than you and I.
5. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines. You will get found out and penalized.
6. Don’t create multiple pages with substantially duplicate content. For instance the same page but with a different town mentioned on each
7. Never participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking
8. Avoid getting valueless links from unrelated websites. Get links from sites with a theme similar to yours (blogs are great)
9. Avoid getting links from low Page Rank pages with loads of outgoing links
10. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t get involved with anything that will get your site banned.
You can win the rankings race with great content and regular honest activity. Short cuts do not exist apart from in the heads of the SEO propeller heads.
For more of the same please visit my seo services website
SEO – The Ten Commandments
SEO – The Ten Commandments
You could write a very long book on this and still get lots of people disagree with you. If you do only half of what’s written below then you will be doing a hundred times more than most web owners!
1. Make sure that your website makes it very clear through content, page titles etc what it is about. Google is not sending human beings to look at your site, it is sending software driven robots. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread then it is probably a duck. Make it obvious!
2. Do not make your website look and read like a brochure.
3. Add regular, original content written for people and not to impress the search engines.
4. Allow people to enjoy and share your website with others. Add a RSS feed and Social Bookmarking buttons if you can.
5. Let others add content to your site Build it as a Wordpress blog or integrate one into your site if possible. Add your original content to the blog where reasonable.
6. Submit your Blog to Technorati to get it out there in cyber space. Submit your site to as many RSS aggregators as you can (Google it)
7. Take your original content and make the most of it by submitting to article sites such as Ezine Articles and press release sites such as PR Web.
8. Have outgoing one-way links to authority sites such as Wikipedia to build your reputation.
9. Link as often as you can between your internal pages. Use anchor text to do this i.e. instead of ‘click here’ use the words that describe the page you are going to.
10. Get links from the best places. DMOZ is still the one to have closely followed by ‘do follow’ links from subject related blogs.
For much, much more on this and other SEO Services please visit my website (this is an anchor text link by the way)
You could write a very long book on this and still get lots of people disagree with you. If you do only half of what’s written below then you will be doing a hundred times more than most web owners!
1. Make sure that your website makes it very clear through content, page titles etc what it is about. Google is not sending human beings to look at your site, it is sending software driven robots. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread then it is probably a duck. Make it obvious!
2. Do not make your website look and read like a brochure.
3. Add regular, original content written for people and not to impress the search engines.
4. Allow people to enjoy and share your website with others. Add a RSS feed and Social Bookmarking buttons if you can.
5. Let others add content to your site Build it as a Wordpress blog or integrate one into your site if possible. Add your original content to the blog where reasonable.
6. Submit your Blog to Technorati to get it out there in cyber space. Submit your site to as many RSS aggregators as you can (Google it)
7. Take your original content and make the most of it by submitting to article sites such as Ezine Articles and press release sites such as PR Web.
8. Have outgoing one-way links to authority sites such as Wikipedia to build your reputation.
9. Link as often as you can between your internal pages. Use anchor text to do this i.e. instead of ‘click here’ use the words that describe the page you are going to.
10. Get links from the best places. DMOZ is still the one to have closely followed by ‘do follow’ links from subject related blogs.
For much, much more on this and other SEO Services please visit my website (this is an anchor text link by the way)
Sunday, 23 November 2008
SEO Basics Thirteen Tips
SEO Basics. Thirteen Tips
SEO Basics - The higher up the search engine rankings you get your website then the more traffic you get. According to AOL the difference in traffic from position #1 and position #10 is an amazing 1,400%!
The information is of course incomplete, but it does at least have the basics listed if not all the details. Do this basic stuff first and then you have the foundations in place for a successful website.
Here goes-
1. Learn why your competitors are ahead of you in the rankings and then copy and do a bit more (free and easy to do).
2. Analyze the best keyword phrases to optimize your website for (time consuming and worth every moment spent).
3. Try and use your main keyword/keyword phrase in your URL if you are starting up. The website name www.london-conservatories.co.uk is somewhat more useful for SEO is better than www.daisymaysmith.co.uk, regardless of how cute your new daughter is!
4. Use your keywords in the page titles and Meta descriptions on your website.
5. Try to link as many internal pages to each other as you can, using anchor text. Anchor text is where; instead of saying ‘click here’ you actually use the keyword as the hyperlink.
6. Add new content as often as you can and then offer the content out via RSS directories such as RSS Mountain.
7. Set up a blog and post the same copy with links back to your website. Submit your site to the blog directories such as Technorati for inclusion.
8. Always have a sitemap
9. Submit your site to Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
10. Submit your site to dmoz and keep your fingers crossed. If you get in then its happy days because the search engines love this site.
11. If your business is local then submit to Google Maps and Yahoo Local. It’s free and will get you traffic.
12. Offer some outbound links from your website as this will mark you out as a useful resource and not just a sales site.
13. Employ a professional SEO company to build incoming links to your websites over a period of months. More and better incoming links equals a better exposure in the search engines (worth every penny)
My SEO Services website has the links, free tools and advice you need to move forward with your internet business. Lots more SEO Basics Tips
SEO Basics - The higher up the search engine rankings you get your website then the more traffic you get. According to AOL the difference in traffic from position #1 and position #10 is an amazing 1,400%!
The information is of course incomplete, but it does at least have the basics listed if not all the details. Do this basic stuff first and then you have the foundations in place for a successful website.
Here goes-
1. Learn why your competitors are ahead of you in the rankings and then copy and do a bit more (free and easy to do).
2. Analyze the best keyword phrases to optimize your website for (time consuming and worth every moment spent).
3. Try and use your main keyword/keyword phrase in your URL if you are starting up. The website name www.london-conservatories.co.uk is somewhat more useful for SEO is better than www.daisymaysmith.co.uk, regardless of how cute your new daughter is!
4. Use your keywords in the page titles and Meta descriptions on your website.
5. Try to link as many internal pages to each other as you can, using anchor text. Anchor text is where; instead of saying ‘click here’ you actually use the keyword as the hyperlink.
6. Add new content as often as you can and then offer the content out via RSS directories such as RSS Mountain.
7. Set up a blog and post the same copy with links back to your website. Submit your site to the blog directories such as Technorati for inclusion.
8. Always have a sitemap
9. Submit your site to Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
10. Submit your site to dmoz and keep your fingers crossed. If you get in then its happy days because the search engines love this site.
11. If your business is local then submit to Google Maps and Yahoo Local. It’s free and will get you traffic.
12. Offer some outbound links from your website as this will mark you out as a useful resource and not just a sales site.
13. Employ a professional SEO company to build incoming links to your websites over a period of months. More and better incoming links equals a better exposure in the search engines (worth every penny)
My SEO Services website has the links, free tools and advice you need to move forward with your internet business. Lots more SEO Basics Tips
Thursday, 20 November 2008
SEO Friendly Copywriting
Copywriting for a website is dissimilar than for any other media because the mindset of those who are going to be reading is different. SEO Friendly Copywriting makes it even more difficult because you are asked to consider writing in a style that suits the search engines but not the reader.
You, know the type of thing I am talking about "pet rabbits are fantastic for children because pet rabbits are pretty and you can meet new friends who also have pet rabbits" etc. It might make your webpage dynamite for the search engines but its total garbage to a human being.
A case in point is my own SEO Services website which I write for regularly. I do not follow the SEO rules manual and just try to write naturally. Is my website optimized perfectly for search engines; No! Is it a place people regularly visit because the content is informative; Yes!
Anyway, back to the copywriting-
Because most web pages will be found via a search engine, the person searching will be looking either for you or another business like yours. This puts them totally in control because they will be focused on finding a piece of information, product or service without much delay.
Questions that visitors might ask themselves quite quickly are - "Is this to the right place?" and "will I find what I'm looking for here?"
It is absolutely vital that you answer these questions in both your headline and any sub-headlines you may have. You need to convince the first time visitor that they are at the right place as soon as possible and that they should continue to read on. To make this happen, your text needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some of the points you should consider when copywriting for the web.
Keep your website copy short and simple
Unless a visitor has been directed to a specific page on your website they will typically only read one or two lines of the text. So the longer your website text is, the less likely they will hang around to read it.
Keeping your copy simple is as important as keeping it short. It is important that website visitors are able to understand what has been written without a second reading.
In most cases, you should strive to convey one key idea effectively in the first couple of lines of writing. Any more and you will start to see visitors click away from the page.
Obviously, a two sentence introduction will not convey a full message and so providing them with a link to another page of your site with more information is a perfectly valid tactic.
What do I do with long copy?
If you do include longer copy, then organize it for the visitor to navigate easily. Providing them with useful headings, sub headings and bulleted lists helps greatly in increasing the stickiness of a page.
Not all the visitors to your website will read long pieces in their entirety. So write copy that is easily skimmed and enables them to read just the parts they are interested in.
Long copy should always be as easy to read and navigate as short copy. If you wouldn't read it yourself then why should your visitors?
Make your copy interesting and lively.
Aim to write in a light and unassuming manner. Do not preach and don't be too confrontational or this will in turn the reader off and what you are trying to convey will not penetrate through to them.
Do not fall into the trap of making your website into 'brochure-ware'. A brochure is one thing and a website is quite another. If it reads like a brochure it probably could and should be improved. Never, ever take the text from your brochure and copy it onto your website.
For details of our copywriting service please follow the link
You, know the type of thing I am talking about "pet rabbits are fantastic for children because pet rabbits are pretty and you can meet new friends who also have pet rabbits" etc. It might make your webpage dynamite for the search engines but its total garbage to a human being.
A case in point is my own SEO Services website which I write for regularly. I do not follow the SEO rules manual and just try to write naturally. Is my website optimized perfectly for search engines; No! Is it a place people regularly visit because the content is informative; Yes!
Anyway, back to the copywriting-
Because most web pages will be found via a search engine, the person searching will be looking either for you or another business like yours. This puts them totally in control because they will be focused on finding a piece of information, product or service without much delay.
Questions that visitors might ask themselves quite quickly are - "Is this to the right place?" and "will I find what I'm looking for here?"
It is absolutely vital that you answer these questions in both your headline and any sub-headlines you may have. You need to convince the first time visitor that they are at the right place as soon as possible and that they should continue to read on. To make this happen, your text needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some of the points you should consider when copywriting for the web.
Keep your website copy short and simple
Unless a visitor has been directed to a specific page on your website they will typically only read one or two lines of the text. So the longer your website text is, the less likely they will hang around to read it.
Keeping your copy simple is as important as keeping it short. It is important that website visitors are able to understand what has been written without a second reading.
In most cases, you should strive to convey one key idea effectively in the first couple of lines of writing. Any more and you will start to see visitors click away from the page.
Obviously, a two sentence introduction will not convey a full message and so providing them with a link to another page of your site with more information is a perfectly valid tactic.
What do I do with long copy?
If you do include longer copy, then organize it for the visitor to navigate easily. Providing them with useful headings, sub headings and bulleted lists helps greatly in increasing the stickiness of a page.
Not all the visitors to your website will read long pieces in their entirety. So write copy that is easily skimmed and enables them to read just the parts they are interested in.
Long copy should always be as easy to read and navigate as short copy. If you wouldn't read it yourself then why should your visitors?
Make your copy interesting and lively.
Aim to write in a light and unassuming manner. Do not preach and don't be too confrontational or this will in turn the reader off and what you are trying to convey will not penetrate through to them.
Do not fall into the trap of making your website into 'brochure-ware'. A brochure is one thing and a website is quite another. If it reads like a brochure it probably could and should be improved. Never, ever take the text from your brochure and copy it onto your website.
For details of our copywriting service please follow the link
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Email Marketing: The Money is in the List!
The money is in the list! The money is in the list! No it’s not a typo because the money really is in the list. Collect your visitor emails anyway you can and keep in touch with new information and incredible offers just for them.
So here’s an example from a friend of mine who has a Lingerie site. He averages circa 500 new visitors a day and at my suggestion added a simple form to his homepage where visitors can leave their email address in return for special offers and the opportunity to visit special pages on his website with sale offer on it.
He found that 9% of visitors left an email address and he was collecting 1350 per month. Every month he sent a special offer and it was converting at 6% giving him 81 extra sales per month. At the end of year one he was making 972 extra sales EVERY month from his email list. Just do it folks or ring me to find out how.
How else can you get emails? Try giving something away in return. Another friend of mine had a gifts website and I advised him to offer special reports in return for an email. The special reports were either – 'the top ten gifts for men' or 'the top ten gifts for women'. He had someone else write the short e-books for him at elance for the cost of a meal for two. His conversion rates were crazy and his business took off because of it!
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my SEO Company website for SEO Services, SEO advice and free SEO tools.
So here’s an example from a friend of mine who has a Lingerie site. He averages circa 500 new visitors a day and at my suggestion added a simple form to his homepage where visitors can leave their email address in return for special offers and the opportunity to visit special pages on his website with sale offer on it.
He found that 9% of visitors left an email address and he was collecting 1350 per month. Every month he sent a special offer and it was converting at 6% giving him 81 extra sales per month. At the end of year one he was making 972 extra sales EVERY month from his email list. Just do it folks or ring me to find out how.
How else can you get emails? Try giving something away in return. Another friend of mine had a gifts website and I advised him to offer special reports in return for an email. The special reports were either – 'the top ten gifts for men' or 'the top ten gifts for women'. He had someone else write the short e-books for him at elance for the cost of a meal for two. His conversion rates were crazy and his business took off because of it!
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my SEO Company website for SEO Services, SEO advice and free SEO tools.
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
5 Basic SEO Tactics
5 Basic SEO Tactics
SEO is not as complicated as you might think although it can be time consuming if you try to do it all yourself.
Search Engine Optimisation is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a search for your particular subject or niche, you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.
Here are five of my favourite SEO tactics for you:
1. Great Content is the number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. Search engines are businesses who supply a product just like any other. The product for a search engine is information and any website that offers quality and new information to the search engines customers usually does well in the rankings. Quality content is vital for SEO success.
2. Keywords are the number one tool for achieving great rankings. Keywords are those words that people search for when looking for products and services. The best keywords are actually phrases that narrow down the search for potential customers.
For example, if you have a site selling toys, you might think ‘toys’ is a great keyword. Wrong! The competition is too great and you would be better looking for something like – ‘toys for girls’ which narrows down the search. So how about ‘toys for girls age six’ which narrows it down even more. True, you will have less people searching but those that do will surely be more likely to buy.
So do your research into what people are searching for. Amend the text etc on your website to reflect this and watch the sales fly in!
‘Long tail keywords’ can be enormously profitable if used correctly.
3. On-page Factors and site design will play a big role in the indexing of your site and it’s content. Make sure that all your pages can be reached from your homepage and that no pages are more than three levels away from it.
Ensure that you have all your Meta tags such as title, description, and keywords optimised. Your page title and description should be keyword targeted but remember to make them draw and entice your potential customers to your website. You never get a second chance to make a first impression!
4. Google is the king of search engines so concentrate most of your SEO efforts on them. I am not saying that you ignore Yahoo! or MSN, just that you be realistic about which company is the big fish in this market.
Use Google's Webmaster Tools to fine tune your pages for Google.
Google Alerts are also useful to keep up on niche keywords and for comment link-building on any newly created pages that Google has indexed.
5. Link Building is the most effective way to boost search rankings. Make sure you get back-links from other sites related to your market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link.
Don't forget that linking is a two-way street. Impress the search engines by linking out to high ranked relevant sites in your niche. For instance, I link out to Google webmaster tools amongst many others, to enhance my credibility and to help my visitors.
Lyndon Ogden is a Director of Your SEO Services and an acknowledged expert on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Having spent many years in the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry, he now passes his expertise on to businesses both large and small interested in web marketing.
SEO is not as complicated as you might think although it can be time consuming if you try to do it all yourself.
Search Engine Optimisation is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a search for your particular subject or niche, you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.
Here are five of my favourite SEO tactics for you:
1. Great Content is the number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. Search engines are businesses who supply a product just like any other. The product for a search engine is information and any website that offers quality and new information to the search engines customers usually does well in the rankings. Quality content is vital for SEO success.
2. Keywords are the number one tool for achieving great rankings. Keywords are those words that people search for when looking for products and services. The best keywords are actually phrases that narrow down the search for potential customers.
For example, if you have a site selling toys, you might think ‘toys’ is a great keyword. Wrong! The competition is too great and you would be better looking for something like – ‘toys for girls’ which narrows down the search. So how about ‘toys for girls age six’ which narrows it down even more. True, you will have less people searching but those that do will surely be more likely to buy.
So do your research into what people are searching for. Amend the text etc on your website to reflect this and watch the sales fly in!
‘Long tail keywords’ can be enormously profitable if used correctly.
3. On-page Factors and site design will play a big role in the indexing of your site and it’s content. Make sure that all your pages can be reached from your homepage and that no pages are more than three levels away from it.
Ensure that you have all your Meta tags such as title, description, and keywords optimised. Your page title and description should be keyword targeted but remember to make them draw and entice your potential customers to your website. You never get a second chance to make a first impression!
4. Google is the king of search engines so concentrate most of your SEO efforts on them. I am not saying that you ignore Yahoo! or MSN, just that you be realistic about which company is the big fish in this market.
Use Google's Webmaster Tools to fine tune your pages for Google.
Google Alerts are also useful to keep up on niche keywords and for comment link-building on any newly created pages that Google has indexed.
5. Link Building is the most effective way to boost search rankings. Make sure you get back-links from other sites related to your market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link.
Don't forget that linking is a two-way street. Impress the search engines by linking out to high ranked relevant sites in your niche. For instance, I link out to Google webmaster tools amongst many others, to enhance my credibility and to help my visitors.
Lyndon Ogden is a Director of Your SEO Services and an acknowledged expert on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Having spent many years in the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry, he now passes his expertise on to businesses both large and small interested in web marketing.
Why SEO during a recession?
Times are tough and going to get tougher. That’s why companies are cutting back on their marketing spending, just as a precaution.
So, in hard times, you’ve got to tighten up the marketing budget, right? Actually the answer should be no because the smart marketer understand that this is the right time to boost the marketing effort. Why? If the pie is smaller, you’ve got to fight harder for your share. Also, if you do it right, you can grab market share while your competitors are hibernating, waiting for the climate to warm up.
I’m not suggesting that you spend like a lottery winner. You’ve just got to be smart about where you spend your money is all. My vested interest is that I have a SEO company which makes its money by helping businesses get more visitors. How many more? Well, position one in Google gets 350% more traffic than position two and 1400% more than position ten! Personally I cannot think of anything more important for a website than getting found.
Here are a few tried and tested web marketing ideas that you can use in good times or bad:
Search Engine Optimization
If your website shows up on the first page of results for your keywords, you will get a constant flow of customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Bingo! Its time to make hay even during a recession.
Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing
Targeted traffic instantly at a cost you control is the upside. A huge waste of money if done wrong is the downside. Do yourself a favour and have a professional set up and manage your campaign and you’ll see a huge difference in results. It won’t cost much and the returns can be amazing.
Pay Per Click Contextual Advertising
This is where your adverts turn up on other people’s websites rather than the search results. Not as targeted as the search engine PPC but a lot cheaper. Never mix the two campaigns together as it drags down your quality score and increases your costs.
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my search engine optimization website for information, advice and free SEO tools.
So, in hard times, you’ve got to tighten up the marketing budget, right? Actually the answer should be no because the smart marketer understand that this is the right time to boost the marketing effort. Why? If the pie is smaller, you’ve got to fight harder for your share. Also, if you do it right, you can grab market share while your competitors are hibernating, waiting for the climate to warm up.
I’m not suggesting that you spend like a lottery winner. You’ve just got to be smart about where you spend your money is all. My vested interest is that I have a SEO company which makes its money by helping businesses get more visitors. How many more? Well, position one in Google gets 350% more traffic than position two and 1400% more than position ten! Personally I cannot think of anything more important for a website than getting found.
Here are a few tried and tested web marketing ideas that you can use in good times or bad:
Search Engine Optimization
If your website shows up on the first page of results for your keywords, you will get a constant flow of customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Bingo! Its time to make hay even during a recession.
Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing
Targeted traffic instantly at a cost you control is the upside. A huge waste of money if done wrong is the downside. Do yourself a favour and have a professional set up and manage your campaign and you’ll see a huge difference in results. It won’t cost much and the returns can be amazing.
Pay Per Click Contextual Advertising
This is where your adverts turn up on other people’s websites rather than the search results. Not as targeted as the search engine PPC but a lot cheaper. Never mix the two campaigns together as it drags down your quality score and increases your costs.
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my search engine optimization website for information, advice and free SEO tools.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Link Baiting for SEO
Link Baiting for SEO
Firstly, what is link-baiting? Link-baiting is a variety of practices which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other websites.
It is a difficult term to define accurately as it covers many different practices ranging from give away tools through to confrontational blog posts, goading people to bite back. Whatever the practice (I will list some later) it all leads to the same thing, namely that people follow links pointing back to your site. From an SEO perspective, It is important to get incoming links to your site as these are seen as a vote of confidence by the search engines. This in turn assists your website or blog to move up the search engine rankings and receive more traffic.
Is link-baiting a good or bad thing?
The problem I suppose is the connotations around the word ‘baiting’ which gives the sense of trying to trick an unsuspecting person into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of link-baiting it is not true with others.
My personal opinion on whether link-baiting is good or bad is that it depends what you are actually doing. Like almost anything online there are ethical and professional people trying to add value to prospective visitors. There are also the people who want to be clever for the sake of it and don’t care at all about anything but the results. For them the end justifies the means.
Here are my favourite three, commonly used link-baiting techniques.
Tools - Give other website owners a useful tool or gadget that they can use on their blog or website that points back to your own.
Lists – There is something about a top ten list that is viral. Check out dig and del.icio.us and you’ll see plenty of examples. A lot of the stuff I write is 'top ten' or 'top three' tips. They do get peoples attention and are usually the best read. Oh, by the way, I can get more traffic from an article site than anywhere else.
Research and Statistics - researching a topic that other people can learn from and quote is another is another effective way to generate incoming links. Recently I discovered some research from AOL that gave the percentage increase in traffic from being position one to position ten in the search engine rankings. If you want to see this research go to the SEO Services website for more info (this is my link-bait by the way).
Firstly, what is link-baiting? Link-baiting is a variety of practices which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other websites.
It is a difficult term to define accurately as it covers many different practices ranging from give away tools through to confrontational blog posts, goading people to bite back. Whatever the practice (I will list some later) it all leads to the same thing, namely that people follow links pointing back to your site. From an SEO perspective, It is important to get incoming links to your site as these are seen as a vote of confidence by the search engines. This in turn assists your website or blog to move up the search engine rankings and receive more traffic.
Is link-baiting a good or bad thing?
The problem I suppose is the connotations around the word ‘baiting’ which gives the sense of trying to trick an unsuspecting person into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of link-baiting it is not true with others.
My personal opinion on whether link-baiting is good or bad is that it depends what you are actually doing. Like almost anything online there are ethical and professional people trying to add value to prospective visitors. There are also the people who want to be clever for the sake of it and don’t care at all about anything but the results. For them the end justifies the means.
Here are my favourite three, commonly used link-baiting techniques.
Tools - Give other website owners a useful tool or gadget that they can use on their blog or website that points back to your own.
Lists – There is something about a top ten list that is viral. Check out dig and del.icio.us and you’ll see plenty of examples. A lot of the stuff I write is 'top ten' or 'top three' tips. They do get peoples attention and are usually the best read. Oh, by the way, I can get more traffic from an article site than anywhere else.
Research and Statistics - researching a topic that other people can learn from and quote is another is another effective way to generate incoming links. Recently I discovered some research from AOL that gave the percentage increase in traffic from being position one to position ten in the search engine rankings. If you want to see this research go to the SEO Services website for more info (this is my link-bait by the way).
Friday, 7 November 2008
Consider search engine optimization before launching a new website
Consider Search Engine Optimization before launching a new website. It will save you time and money as well as boosting your chances of success.
Some facts for you: Nearly 73% of new visitors to a website come through a search engine. The difference in the amount of traffic between position #1 and position #10 the search results is 1,400%. In fact the difference between #1 and #2 is still 350%
More traffic.
I spend my life looking at nice websites that will never get found because either the owners or the web agency do not understand SEO. Buying some SEO services from an SEO company would have made all the difference because search engine optimisation can make or break a site as a commercial entity.
If you remember nothing else, then please remember this. The biggest search engine is Google and they do not use human editors to decide what your website is about. Unless you make it blindingly obvious with your page titles and text etc what you do for a living then forget it. So if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread like a duck, guess what? It’s probably a duck! Remember the duck when building your website and you will not go far wrong.
So here you go; a few basic SEO guidelines for easy search engine indexing.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand the terms or don’t want to do the work yourself. There are many companies out there who can design you a SEO friendly website for not much more money than a regular site. Just make sure that they understand SEO please before giving them your money.
• Before starting out you need to decide which phrases are used when people search for your type of product or service. These words are called keywords and it is these that dictate how the pages on the site are described and also what text is used on the pages. There is a useful free keyword tool at Google to get you started.
• Design your site in html and minimise the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make the code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engines to read your content and allocate the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
• Make sure that your Meta tags are coded correctly and include the correct SEO keyword phrases that you want to be found for. If your Meta tags are search engine optimised and compelling, you massively improve your chances of a higher search engine ranking.
• Apply the proper tags to your page; ‘h’ tags are a great way to call attention to your content and promote your keywords. Try to use each tag at least once, but remember that you want your text to read well and appear normal.
• Add an html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on your site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly.
• Include a links page where you point visitors at other websites they might find interesting. Google in particular is keen for websites to offer a fantastic visitor experience and linking out is partly the proof of this. My own website links out to sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo! And MSN. None are in competition with me but all can add value to my visitor.
• Easy for some and difficult for others is the adding of fresh content to a website. Search engines rely on new content as much as we rely on oxygen to live. Now I absolutely realise that if your business has a single product that seldom changes then, unlike SEO there is not a mountain to write about. But why not consider case studies, customer comments, press releases or company news? All are perfectly acceptable as fresh content and the very fact you are trying does carry weight with the search engines
Starting with the strong foundation of a site that meets basic SEO standards will stand you in good stead for moving forward and for your website to be more than a glossy but often unread brochure on the web.
Some facts for you: Nearly 73% of new visitors to a website come through a search engine. The difference in the amount of traffic between position #1 and position #10 the search results is 1,400%. In fact the difference between #1 and #2 is still 350%
More traffic.
I spend my life looking at nice websites that will never get found because either the owners or the web agency do not understand SEO. Buying some SEO services from an SEO company would have made all the difference because search engine optimisation can make or break a site as a commercial entity.
If you remember nothing else, then please remember this. The biggest search engine is Google and they do not use human editors to decide what your website is about. Unless you make it blindingly obvious with your page titles and text etc what you do for a living then forget it. So if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread like a duck, guess what? It’s probably a duck! Remember the duck when building your website and you will not go far wrong.
So here you go; a few basic SEO guidelines for easy search engine indexing.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand the terms or don’t want to do the work yourself. There are many companies out there who can design you a SEO friendly website for not much more money than a regular site. Just make sure that they understand SEO please before giving them your money.
• Before starting out you need to decide which phrases are used when people search for your type of product or service. These words are called keywords and it is these that dictate how the pages on the site are described and also what text is used on the pages. There is a useful free keyword tool at Google to get you started.
• Design your site in html and minimise the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make the code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engines to read your content and allocate the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
• Make sure that your Meta tags are coded correctly and include the correct SEO keyword phrases that you want to be found for. If your Meta tags are search engine optimised and compelling, you massively improve your chances of a higher search engine ranking.
• Apply the proper tags to your page; ‘h’ tags are a great way to call attention to your content and promote your keywords. Try to use each tag at least once, but remember that you want your text to read well and appear normal.
• Add an html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on your site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly.
• Include a links page where you point visitors at other websites they might find interesting. Google in particular is keen for websites to offer a fantastic visitor experience and linking out is partly the proof of this. My own website links out to sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo! And MSN. None are in competition with me but all can add value to my visitor.
• Easy for some and difficult for others is the adding of fresh content to a website. Search engines rely on new content as much as we rely on oxygen to live. Now I absolutely realise that if your business has a single product that seldom changes then, unlike SEO there is not a mountain to write about. But why not consider case studies, customer comments, press releases or company news? All are perfectly acceptable as fresh content and the very fact you are trying does carry weight with the search engines
Starting with the strong foundation of a site that meets basic SEO standards will stand you in good stead for moving forward and for your website to be more than a glossy but often unread brochure on the web.
Black Hat SEO Tactics
Black Hat SEO
These Tactics Are Considered Black Hat SEO For A Reason.
These Are Not Legitimate Tactics And While Some May Work In The Short Term.
They WILL Get Your Website Penalised And/Or Banned Eventually.
Constantly webmasters attempt to "trick" the search engines into ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites using black-hat SEO tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as they climb (if they do climb at all).
The following tactics are not listed to help you "trick" the search engines but rather to warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other SEO's (this is not to say that all other search engine optimisation experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned against them).
Due to the sheer number of tricks and scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat tactics. Many SEO's and webmasters have simply modified the below tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may, but not forever and probably not for long.
Black-Hat SEO Tactics:
Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same colour as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same colour as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same colour as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don't think they aren't watching you if you're holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.
Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalised. That or you'll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done "correctly" (we cannot give the method for "correct" interlinking here as it's still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don't want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Please feel free to visit my seo services website for seo services, free tools and lots of advice.
These Tactics Are Considered Black Hat SEO For A Reason.
These Are Not Legitimate Tactics And While Some May Work In The Short Term.
They WILL Get Your Website Penalised And/Or Banned Eventually.
Constantly webmasters attempt to "trick" the search engines into ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites using black-hat SEO tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as they climb (if they do climb at all).
The following tactics are not listed to help you "trick" the search engines but rather to warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other SEO's (this is not to say that all other search engine optimisation experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned against them).
Due to the sheer number of tricks and scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat tactics. Many SEO's and webmasters have simply modified the below tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may, but not forever and probably not for long.
Black-Hat SEO Tactics:
Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same colour as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same colour as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same colour as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don't think they aren't watching you if you're holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.
Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalised. That or you'll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done "correctly" (we cannot give the method for "correct" interlinking here as it's still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don't want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Please feel free to visit my seo services website for seo services, free tools and lots of advice.
Blog Marketing
Blog Marketing
Blog marketing can be an excellent tool in search engine optimisation because search engines consider a blog to be both an authority and a good content site..
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via weblogs (Blogs). These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services. Because search engines look to blogs as both authority sites and great resources for fresh content, they can be excellent tools in search engine optimisation.
Many organisations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplementary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.
Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006. "Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."
Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.
So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?
A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers.Links from blogs can be a good source of quality back-links and also targeted traffic dependent on the nature of your website.
Blog marketing can be an excellent tool in search engine optimisation because search engines consider a blog to be both an authority and a good content site..
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via weblogs (Blogs). These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services. Because search engines look to blogs as both authority sites and great resources for fresh content, they can be excellent tools in search engine optimisation.
Many organisations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplementary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.
Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006. "Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."
Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.
So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?
A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers.Links from blogs can be a good source of quality back-links and also targeted traffic dependent on the nature of your website.
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