Wednesday 30 December 2009

SEO Tips - Do You Need to Hire an Expert

Let me start off by saying that there are quite a few areas, when it comes to your business, where you really should hire an expert, such as if you need a sales letter written. A great copywriter can make a big difference in the results that you get. But what about when it comes to optimizing your site for the search engines? Do you REALLY have to hire an expert? This article is going to give you this one man's opinion on the subject. Take it for what it's worth to you.
Unlike copywriting, which brings you immediate results, SEO is a long process. You don't put up a site and get results overnight. Proper SEO requires on page as well as off page optimization...and that takes time. Okay, so what does this have to do with hiring an expert?
With a sales page, the minute you put that page up, you are going to get people to see it and will then either get results (if the letter is well written) or not get results (if the letter is poorly written). This is a time sensitive and time critical piece of your puzzle. But with search engine optimization, not so. Think about it. A brand new web site is probably not going to get any visitors when it's first put up...no matter how well optimized the page itself is.
Therefore, you have time to actually work on the optimization itself. You can afford to take time to actually learn your craft. And make no mistake about it...SEO CAN be learned. It's not really hard. The on page techniques are really very basic and simple. It's off page that gets a little complicated. But that's going to take time no matter who does it.
Besides, this is a skill that, once it's learned, can come in handy for a very long time and for a number of reasons. One of those, ironically enough, is that someday YOU will be the expert and the go to person. People will be coming to YOU for optimizing their pages.
And then there is one other thing to realize. It's not so easy to find an expert in this area, at least one you can trust. A lot of people CLAIM to be experts but really, when it comes down to it, they don't know their web page from a hole in the ground. And then, when you find out you've been taken, there is no making up for all that lost time.
Here's the bottom line as I see it. Learn how to do your own search engine optimization. It will save you money to begin with, especially if it's money you don't have, and it will be a skill that you will ALWAYS be able to use.

New Year, New Goals, New Search Marketing Methods

As I am writing this it is almost the end of 2009. The first decade in the twenty-first century is coming to a close and many things have been discovered and changed over the last ten years. The use of search engines and the Internet in general has increased in population size and in speed. Now, faster than ever before people can find what they are looking for instantly. Ten years ago Google was still in its' infancy and most people who were on the Internet were using dial-up modems. People had more patience then, but with 2010 quickly approaching those of use on the Net expect things almost at the speed of light!
With this new year upon us many people are setting new goals and milestones for their personal lives, as well as businesses. No matter what type of business that you may have, your goal is probably to get more customers, make more money, or both. These are not the only two goals that are important, but they are crucial in order to grow a business and website. In order to get more customers, your search engine marketing has to be something that you focus on and put effort into in order to thrive in today's market.
Some newer marketing methods that have surfaced in the past year or two is the use of social networks to build brand awareness and attract more visitors to your website. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter have been the talk of the Internet. MySpace's popularity has died down in the past year, but Facebook and Twitter have sky-rocketed. It wouldn't hurt to have a presence on MySpace, but if you were to focus on two social networks right now, I would say make sure that you are on Twitter and Facebook. Even people that don't have the Internet at home know what Facebook and Twitter are!
If you are looking for new ways to improve your website to attract more customers one thing that you need to focus on is speed. The speed of your website is what I am referring to. If your site is sluggish to download you will loose many customers. On top of that, Google has mentioned that they may start using the download speed of a website as one of their factors in determining search engine rankings.
Of course good, relevant content is still a key factor, but now more than ever people are not going to be sitting around waiting for your page to download. They will simply click away back to the search engine and find another website. If you think your big, flashy presentation is neat, but takes 3 minutes to download, you'd better re-think your website design. If you have video that takes forever to buffer, you will get considerably less visitors. Speed of your website is something that everybody needs to consider as an important factor of keeping visitors on your site and now even in terms of ranking high.
So if one of your goals this New Year's is improving your website and marketing methods to increase customers you need to focus on speed of your site and make use of social media to increase your popularity. Although it is still not 100% clear how these factors will exactly be applied, we know that they are important and it is never to early to start working on them. If you jump on taking care of these things before your competitors, it can leave you in a much better (and higher) search engine position.
Scott Young is the owner of Florida SEO Pro, an Internet marketing company specializing in Florida search engine optimization and local website marketing. They provide their clients with dynamic optimization services to help keep up with the major search engines and build long-term, top rankings.

A Brief Introduction to Doncaster, South Yorkshire

Doncaster is a town in the county of South Yorkshire, United Kingdom. It has a significant population of over 70,000 and also has an international airport. Due to its effective transport links, the town is very significant and has a large business and commercial area.

The town also has a rich Roman heritage and it was located on the site of a Roman fort which was constructed in the first century by the River Don. The name of the town comes from the river and also from the Latin word Castra which means military camp. During Roman Times, the town was home to a very significant Roman horse garrison.

It greater significance in the thirteenth century, as it became a particularly important market town. The muppet still operates today on exactly the same site although it is very different and the church which it was based around was eventually demolished in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Doncaster were also played an important role in the Industrial Revolution and in this time its population boomed considerably. Thanks to its river, it had natural and adequate transport links to various other places and this is part of the reason for are becoming important during this time.

Avenge she, the railways came to Doncaster and the town continue to grow. It was also home of Britain's most famous steam engines. In fact, Doncaster was also the place where the famous Flying Scotsman steam engine was built, the very first vehicle in the world to reach a hundred miles per hour.

The town is served by two motorways and also has a railway station. Is also near an international airport. Frequent buses also serve a number of other towns throughout the United Kingdom and there are also various connection straight to London.

Find your next Doncaster hotel

Monday 28 December 2009

What Exactly is Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate keyword phrases related to your site to ensure that this ranks your site highly in Google so that when an individual searches for specific phrases that you are marketing to, it will push your site to the top of the search engine results.

It simply involves adjusting the content of your website along with the HTML coding and Meta tags. It also involves making sure to establish the appropriate link building process.

The most popular search engine in the wold today is Google, fallowed by Yahoo and MSN. Those are your top 3

Google and others keep their methods and ranking algorithms top secret to ensure that they are finding the most "related" content and to deter "Spam" from clogging those results. Google, Yahoo, MSN Etc... uses hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually.

Algorithms can differ so drastically that a webpagethat ranks #1 in one particular search engine could easily rank #200 or worse in another search engine. That is why understanding marketing is critical to your online success.

You do not however need to submit your site to the individual search engines. A simple link from a well established site (such as a Article Site, etc...) will get the research engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its content. It can take a few days or it may take a few weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

When it comes to optimizing your site it may seem overwhelming and complex. And if you do not have the time or understanding to do it yourself it may be worth looking in to hiring a professional company and or individual to get you started on the right path.

Internet Marketing companies will look at the plan for your site and offer suggestions to help increase your search engine ranking and your sites overall traffic. These companies typically will offer ongoing consultations and detailed reporting and monitoring of your site. They should also continue to provide opinions and recommendations for editing and improving your sites traffic and overall search engine ranking.

Typically the marketing experts will work with you or your web designer to build and integrate a plan that flows with all aspects of your site and make sure it is laid out properly and effectively.

Website Plays an Important Role to Run an Online Business

Website is the most important thing to have if you are planning to run an online business. With the help of a website you can easily reach your target audience. You can make them read about your products and convince them to purchase it. The Website design of your company is the primary factor in determining the customer's decision while purchasing your products. The design, style, quality and information that it provides must be clear and impressive enough to not leave any doubts on the mind of the consumer.

So what are the things that you should see in a web development company when choosing it to design the website of your company?

1. The website development company you choose must have enough experience and knowledge so that it can make use of latest technology and advanced tools while designing your website. It should have a strong background and must have undertaken at least 10-20 similar projects.

2. You web application development company must be quick enough to give you a site map defining the design of your website and the way in which it will be created. The navigation system and entire plan of its development must be given to you in advance so that you can see what changes you want to make in it.

3. With a site map you would be able to see section that you can use to place pictures and content of your website. The pictures and information of your products and services will have to be provided by you so that website Development Company can create an informative content using its applications, features and benefits for the consumer.

4. The application development company must be skilled enough to implement the type of software you need in your website. It should help you choose the latest software that would help in increasing the traffic towards your website and will help you communicate with your customers in a better way.

5. Software Development Company is the right one to judge which type of software's would benefit your business the best. For example having a complaint box or a SMS feature on your website that would place customer queries instantly in front of you. This will help you maintain a healthy relationship with your customer and turn them into potential customers.

6. The web development company will create content using relevant keywords that would make it easier for the search engines to trace your website in search engine results.

7. A software development company must provide you with 24 hour technical support so that you all your troubles regarding the server and other issues can be solved instantly.

8. There are many people who do not get 24 hour support from their application development companies due to which during the time of sever break down they suffer a huge loss in terms of business and customers.

9. The web development companies must create a website that can be upgraded and improved from time to time with improving technology.

Sunday 27 December 2009

Choose the Right SEO Specialist Company to Promote Your Website Online

Promoting a Website or Blog Online is a necessary task for every online business. Even if you have an excellent designed website, no one will visit your website, because they never know what your website address is? This is where the Internet Marketing people or SEO Specialists are needed. They are the ones who promote your website online.
Applying the right SEO Techniques for a website is the major part for Success. The key role of Search Engine Optimization is Link Building. If you do link building without proper knowledge on SEO, then your website may get penalized due to improper link building or black hat SEO.
Just search for your general keywords [Ex: Web Designing Company, Send free SMS etc...]. You will get millions of result [Websites] which are providing those similar services including you. That means there are very few chances of visitors coming to your website. If you hire an SEO Specialist, then he will take care of everything [Right from Keyword Analysis, Competitor Analysis, Building links etc...] to bring your website to top rankings in the search engines. This will definitely improve your websites rankings and more chances of visitors buying products from you or using your services.
Also, when hiring an SEO Specialist, you should remember the following tips.
1. See the previous experience of the SEO Expert or the SEO Company [i.e, their previous projects].
2. Check whether they give assurance of bringing your site to the top for your required keywords [If you don't know which keywords to choose, you can ask them to do it for you].
3. If they say that, they will bring your site to top in very less time, ignore them and select another good company or a freelancer. Because, no site will achieve top rankings in very less time unless until we implement black hat SEO Techniques[not suggested] for that site which will be considered by Google as a fraud activity. Even we get penalized by Google and our site will not be appeared in Search Results at all.
4. Check whether they give you continuous customer support.
Remember these simple tips when hiring an SEO Specialist Company and achieve top rankings in Search Results which will be your next step to success in your online business.

SEO Tips - Playing the Google Shuffle

Imagine if you will, this common scenario.
A web site builder puts together his site. He is very meticulous about every detail. He's got the perfect domain name, his H1 tag just so, his anchor text perfect and enough content to choke a horse. He's gotten himself backlinks from some great sites. His site, after just a few days, is number 3 on Google's hit parade. He is on top of the world.
And then it happens...the dreaded Google dance, or as I call it, "The Google Shuffle." Maybe I should write a song about it. But I digress.
Anyway, the Google dance takes place and this site is now nowhere to be found. The site owner is in an absolute panic. So he starts tinkering with the site. He starts slamming it with content, some of it which is not so good, and goes about doing some other things that I won't mention here because I don't want to give anybody any bad ideas. He does everything he can to save his site...only to end up making matters worse and getting it sandboxed for life.
If only he had left things alone.
Truth be told, most new sites get a pretty good boost up the rankings the first day or two. This is common. Then, as Google gets a feel for your site, it then settles down to where it should be AT THAT POINT IN TIME. Then, when you've settled in, THAT is when you SLOWLY start to work on your site. Maybe add one or two pieces of content a day. Don't go crazy. And don't go crazy with getting backlinks either. Too many, too fast is trouble.
But don't tinker with the structure of the site unless there are really some major things wrong with it, in which case you wouldn't have hit number three on the hit parade in the first place. Your site, with many flaws, would have been nowhere to be found and you wouldn't be in a panic in the first place. Well, you'd be in a panic...just a different kind of panic. At least then, you'd have something to panic about.
SEO is a time intensive task. It doesn't happen overnight and it isn't permanent. There will always be new sites coming up and trying to take your place in the rankings. Therefore, you will always have to add content and get backlinks. But don't do it all at once and don't panic when Google does its dance.
It's just part of the process.

Wednesday 23 December 2009

How Are Keywords Important to Your Network Marketing Business

What are keywords? They are words or phrases that people on the Internet use to search for product or services or other information. User of Google or some other search engine will type in words about information they are looking for. They don't know or care if they are good keywords; they are just looking information. The words or phrases the user types in becomes the key words that Google searches for on websites, blogs, article, etc. They can be one word or they can be a phrase. Google or other search engines will return search results that are ranked by relevancy.

How do you find good keywords? That is a great question. You can ask 10 people and you will get ten answers. Finding good words is an acquired skill. You jump and try some keywords and refine your words by what converts in the market. Having the right tools can make the process of finding words easier. You have access to several tools on the internet. Google provides an excellent keyword search tool. Wordtracker, also, has a free keyword search tool that works very well. Your job is to identify what words your target market is using in their searches on Google. Then position your information on your product or services with those keywords in the content so the search engines find your them and match it with the searchers request and to be displayed.

You are looking for words that help convert better. Continued research into the good converting words help form longer, long-tail keywords, more specific words. It will be difficult ranking high for a one-word keyword because there will be so many people using that word and they have more money than you. Long-tail keywords are words in a phrase, more than one or two words. For example: "Golf" is a very broad keyword and will return a lot of pages (309,000,000 pages), not very likely that someone will see your article or video; "Golf clubs" is better, more specific and less competition (37,600,000 pages); "Wood Golf Clubs" is more specific (1,810,000 ages). As you can see the more specific the keywords the less competition and more likely you can reach the first page of Google, which we all know is where the action is.

How do you use these words in your online business? Once you find good money keywords you use them in your article, video, titles and blogs. Anywhere you have a description or information that the search engines are going to look over and index. Google, Yahoo or Bing send out their spiders, small search program, to search for poplar keywords; place them in titles & sub-titles on your website or blog, in article titles and copy, and even in descriptions for videos on YouTube. This is the free search that you want. You are making your content visible as possible with words that users of the search engines are looking for. Want to increase Google's ranking of your site? Then start by adding your keywords to all parts of your website that you can (titles, sub-titles and other content) SEO is a complete package not just about the keywords in content only. The more times they show up in website titles, or blog categories the better your ranking. The whole package is what SEO is all about and create free traffic.

No one will we join your network marketing opportunity if they can't find you or it. Keywords are the connections that your content makes with the search engines. Money keywords are ones that users of Google, Yahoo or Bing are using to find information they are looking for. Don't forgot the great research tools that are available to you to reduce your work load, Google search tool or Wordtracker. Document your results so you can evaluate and adjust as needed. Once you have these words use them in your title, sub-title and copy in your website, article, blogs or videos. Don't abusive your use of these words. Besides you want your target market to think you know what you are talking about and get your point across in a knowledgeable manner.

SEO and You - The Basics

When it comes to SEO you need to know the basics in order to create and rank a page ranking. Why is this important to you in your business? Simply put, SEO deals specifically with search engine optimization. The search engines will rank your page in accordance with certain high ranking terms and will present your page in their listings according to that ranking. It sends out "spiders" to crawl your site looking for those keywords. If they find them, then they will be ranked accordingly. There are several tools that can be used to create this.

So how do you use SEO to increase your page ranking and get you more business? The answer is deceptively simple. You will create a page loaded with quality content that includes certain keywords in a certain way and in a certain percentage in order to rank your page. Let's explain what keywords are and how to use them. You will begin by choosing certain keywords that will rank your page higher. Services such as Google AdWords can be of service here. You will choose keywords to include in your text that a spider will pick up.

You will then write a small advertisement with these keywords so that the search engines can rank your page. AdWords will give you a choice of words to use and some synonyms that can also be ranked. After you have chosen your advertisement, you will choose how long it will run and what the cost will be. When you used this service, you will need to wait at least one month before your results will be ranked accordingly. Now let's talk about writing quality content with SEO and just what that entails.

When you are working with SEO, you need to understand how SEO works and how to use it to rank your pages. When you are writing quality content, the content must be engaging as well as having keywords. So what is the legal keyword density as supplied by the WC3? The actual keyword density to keep you out of trouble is supposedly no more than 3%. Any more than that can get you into trouble with them and as some have found out, blacklisted. This would mean at least a word count of 500 that would be for 1 percent would be 5 times. This needs to be adhered to.

After you have got your web page up and working, then the search engines will begin to search your page and begin to rank you. It will take time in order to get the ranking right. You may need to tweak your pages in order to get the higher ranking. Careful research into keywords and keyword costs can help you to keep your advertisement costs very low. While you can pay high dollar for high ranking keywords, you need to keep your costs simple so that you don't bankrupt yourself. This is the SEO basics for ranking your site and keeping it in the public eye.

Links Or Content - What is More Important

I recently watched a video Matt Cutts of Google produced regarding the importance content versus the importance of links for your website. He basically said that if you build a one million paged website that only has two sites linking to it, most of the pages of the one million paged website would not get crawled by Google, and that the site would not be considered an authority site by Google.

Those statements shoot holes in the theory that if you build a large enough website, it will be considered an authority site by Google. The fact is that you need backlinks to your website in order to gain authority.

You need to be balanced in your use of this information, though. If all you build are one page websites, you are not likely to get many return visitors to your sites. One page websites give very little reason for visitor to return. They are also very unlikely to generate links from other websites without you having to build them.

A good overall strategy is to build medium to large websites and build as many links to them as possible. Make sure you have enough interesting content that people would be likely to come back and/or recommend the website to like-minded friends. With that strategy you can create a regular customer base, while building enough link strength to increase your Google rankings. The Google rankings, in turn, help you expand your customer base even more.

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Construct a Successful SEO Campaign For More Leads and More Clients

You may have heard the phrase "what you can't track, you can't improve". I hold more of an optimistic point of view when it comes to marketing, which is why I say; What you CAN track, you WILL improve. There is simply no other advertising or marketing medium more powerful, trackable, and predictable then search engine optimization (SEO). From a business point of view, every SEO campaign should commence with the idea that there will be a significant return on investment. Contrary to guessing what you can expect from advertising, SEO internet marketing is a much more predictable and trackable process.

Selecting the right keywords and keyphrases for your SEO campaign is critical for success. No one knows what your prospects are searching for better than you (at least we hope so). The best approach is selecting a variety of keywords and keyphrases rather than just the popular ones. High volume keywords are typically less targeted, therefor result in a lower conversion rate. Choose long tail and more specific keywords for better rankings and higher conversion rates.

Ensure that your revenue target is your ultimate goal when constructing your SEO campaign. It should not be measured in terms of website traffic, hits, or even how many times your site pops up in the search engine results pages. How many clients or sales are you trying to acquire with your SEO campaign? With the understanding of how much a new client is worth annually to your business, and what your average lead to close percentage is, you will be able to accurately determine how many targeted prospects you will need to drive to your website to meet your goal.

A successful SEO campaign will increase the number of visitors who are actively seeking your products and services. Successful SEO will create enough impressions on the search engine results pages to deliver enough visitors to meet your ultimate revenue target. By obtaining first page rankings, you're ensuring that your SEO campaign is running to it's maximum potential for your targeted keywords. Very few internet browsers advance beyond the first page in search results, which is why I personally consider the first page the only place to be. Continuous statistics show that a first place listing in the organic results acquire almost half of all organic clicks. The further down the page, the less traffic you receive. Conservatively speaking, a well executed SEO campaign will result in 5-10% of the total search volume for that keyword or keyphrase clicking through to your website.

Written by Adam Skiba