A Look at Search Engine Marketing’s Benefits Tuesday, Feb 2 2010 

It’s reasonable to state that in 2010, search engine optimization finally became a familiar term used in marketing circles, and is now a familiar strategy utilized by organizations wishing to promote their website. Nonetheless, only 5 years ago, SEO was judged to be simply cheating. And nowadays, how things have transformed: now SEO demands a larger set of talents in ethical spheres : content writing, promoting a website using social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and persuading others to link to your website (by composing wonderful and/or contentious content that acquires links from other sites).

Bing, Google, Yahoo! and other search engines have likewise become far more advanced than only valuing links to decide rankings : they can discover how long individuals browse your website for, the number of pages they view, and in the main how much of an interesting resource your website is.

And all the same, without doubt links are still primary to determine rankings, and because of this you must make your site a remarkable resource that people want to link to.

But if you can’t wait a long time to get good rankings, you can apply Pay Per Click campaigning. This is a system where businesses bid a particular amount of money for each time the advertisement is clicked on. The sum you bid for counts on the keywords that actually activate the displaying of your advert in the search engines. Keywords are indispensable to the relevancy of the people that actually click on your advertizements, and so PPC is a useful method to find out which keywords convert to sales and those that aren’t impressive. When you’re armed with this information, you can then pinpoint those keywords in your search engine optimization effort too.

We recommend you hire a company that provides a search engine positioning service first off, and learn from their strategies. That way you’re not merely putting your site in the hands of professional people, you can in addition learn from them as well. In addition, you should ensure you hire an SEO service provider who are in your neighbourhood. Just type in some words like SEO + your locale, e.g. seo nottingham. Why? Search engine optimization is a rather nuanced field, therefore it’s a good idea to get to know your Search engine marketing business you take on, and there’s no substitute for person-to-person group meetings to discuss the finer points.

Using SEO Theory to Develop Competitive Marketing Advantages Thursday, Nov 5 2009 

If you have a Website you probably look at search engine results and try to guess how you can get more traffic from them. Many people focus only on Google but millions of Websites receive a lot of traffic from Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo!. The great thing about today’s search engines is that they serve up billions of queries to hundreds of millions of people every month. Just about anyone who wants to get traffic from search engines should be able to find a few topics where they can get the visitors they need.

One of the most creative talents in the Web marketing field, SEO theory, has proposed that people can “build query spaces”. This means that you create a Web site that ranks well for an expression that no one searches on and then you teach people to search for that expression. This is most often achieved through a mix of advertising and publicity, where you develop a story around your keywords and then tell that story to people over and over again. If the story is compelling enough people will search on the keywords.

And for those people who doubt the viability of this method, the SEO Theory story is living proof that the method works. Only a few years ago no one was searching on the term “SEO theory”. Now, not only do people search for “SEO theory”, they also try to compete with the original SEO theory site for its own name.

Of course, trying to steal the thunder of the best SEO theory guide on the Web is probably not the smartest thing a marketer can do. After all, waiting until after SEO Theory has been used to dominate a query space stacks the odds in the incumbent’s favor — and that’s just not very good SEO theory at all.

How URL Length Affects Search Engine Placement Thursday, Jan 22 2009 

There is some difference of opinion on the subject of whether or not the URL of a web site affects its search rankings. Let us first note the golden rule of search engine optimization. Though shalt not build a web site for search engines, but rather for human visitors.

There is evidence which indicates URL selection affects search rankings. The two main factors seem to be:

1. Extremely long URL’s seem to be considered hard to type by a human, therefore an attempt at spam; and 2. Given the fact that a long URL is considered an attempt at spam, it would then seem to be true that search engine rankings can be improved by the use of keyphrases in a URL.

An example of the first point above would be a URL that looks something like this: www.roses-chrysanthemums-tulips-and-more.com. No legitimate company would actually want this domain, nor would any human care to type it. It is an obvious attempt to spam the search engines. So, we remember the Golden Rule of Search Engine Optimization. Some studies have shown that extremely long domain names appear less frequently in the top twenty results than do shorter ones.

That being said, empirical evidence does support search engine indexing of URL keywords. Both Google and Yahoo!, for example, display in bold the portion of a URL that matches a search string, which seems to me indicative of indexing. However, I have been unable to ascertain, either personally or through extensive research, any truly significant occurrence of URL’s in the top twenty results which contain the search string.

The lesson learned here is this: name your web site what would be a logical name - for instance, after your business name. Make it friendly to a human. If a search query happens to be part of that business name, then fine. Don’t, however, engage in keyword stuffing in the selection of the URL.

——— About the Author: Matt Foster is the president of ArteWorks Business Class and an expert on search engine optimization. He has been active in the industry since 1995. For further information, please visit www.arteworks.biz or www.search-bully.com.

SEM - Research Measures Success Wednesday, Dec 31 2008 

SEM - Research Measures Success

Search engine marketing success comes from good research. By
applying research to understand your competition and target
audience, your optimization efforts will succeed.

Remember when homework from school often required some research on your part to complete? It is much the same scenario for
search engine marketing: you need to apply yourself by
researching in order to understand your competition and
target audience. Your visitors need to relate to you and
understand your message and what you want them to do.

Know Your Industry

You must spend time understanding the industry you are
trying to make a profit from. If you sell widgets, know
everything you can about widgets: where they come from, how
they are typically sold, why people need them, etc. You can
learn a great deal from your competitors. Research using
industry communications such as online magazines, forums,
newsletters and blogs. Read articles written by industry
leaders and keep up on the latest news about your industry.
The more you know, the better your basis for building an
authoritative website.

What’s Your Point?

Ok, so you’ve got this product you want to sell online. What
are you saying to your audience? Make sure you write in a
clear, concise way so your message does not get lost in the
process. Just because everyone in your company understands
your message doesn’t mean the visitors to your site will.
Have a few test scenarios set up; ask a few objective
readers what they understand from your website and see just
how much your message is getting across. You’d be surprised
that what may be obvious to you is not necessarily obvious
to your website visitors. If you are having trouble creating
a clear message for your website, consider hiring a
copywriter to convey what you want to say.

Know Your Target Audience

Who buys your product and why? Who needs the information you
have on your website? Who would you like to have visit your

website that isn’t already there? Who is visiting you? Are
they professionals who understand your technical terms or
visitors of varying levels who all need the same information
from you? What do you offer that a certain market would want
from you? Take the time to get a good look at what is out
there and how your competitors are presenting their
information to online visitors. Use your log statistics
reports to track who comes to your website. Get familiar
with the keyword terms they are using in the search engines
to find you. Research the domains that most visit you. Find
out why visitors are clicking away from certain pages before
going deeper into the content of your website. Is it a lack
of information? Too many choices to click on? Is the
language used or instructions given easy to understand?
Don’t give your visitors a reason to leave before they
understand your message.

Know Your Competition

Take a good look at your top competition and see what they
are offering online. Even looking at websites that are not
direct competitors may give you an idea of what to offer
your visitors. Think of it this way: someone put effort into
creating those websites. Visit your competitor’s website.
Search in the major search engines for your most important
keyword phrases and see if your competitors show up in the
top thirty search engine results. Learn what you can and see
if what they are doing is something you should be doing.
It’s always good to know if your competitors are using SEO,
Paid Inclusion, PPC, Link Building and other means to rank
well.

Make Your Website Accessible

There’s nothing worse than muddling through a website
looking for what you want and clicking so much you finally
give up. Use easy navigation, make sure your information or
products are easily accessible to your visitors. Create
written text that is easily understood in order to get your
message across readily. Give your visitors plenty of written
information. There’s no such thing as “too much text” when
it comes to search engine robots “understanding” your web
pages. What’s good for the visitor is often good for the
search engine robots.

Do The Work

Research is the cornerstone to your success. The more you
know about your subject, the better you will be able to
inform your visitors. By informing your visitors you build
trust and interest in learning more about your website. Do
the math - get searching!

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.

Copyright © 2002-2005 Search Innovation Marketing.
http://www.searchinnovation.com All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without editing, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.

Guide to Search Engine Optimization Friday, Oct 10 2008 

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is modification done in the web site design, coding, content and/or structure of a web site in an effort to achieve the higher ranking within search engines. Search Engine Optimization are done to attend the highest ranking in the search engine results for some targeted keywords or key phrases.

Search engine optimization can be enforced on the website while designing it or can be performed after a website is designed. It is a technique that can be used to develop a website, which is search engine friendly. Most of the search engine uses a software called “crawlers” or “spider”. The main motive of these software are to check the website create their index (search engine index).

The method of getting search result is different for each search engines. Search engine applies many techniques to index the web pages and include into its directory. So the next time if your web page ranking high within one search engine and not in another then do not bother, it’s because of different method used by these search engines. To rank higher in all the search engine you can do the things which is used by all search engines. You have to track all the changes happened in the search engine operation or method of spider software for getting search results and accordingly modify your web sites.

The process of search engine optimization includes the optimization of the following items:

Analyzing Site
Site Designing
Promotion of website and
Maintenance of website.

Important things to be remembered while Optimizing Your Web Site

A better optimized site rank high. Optimizing a website is not about tricking with the search engine, instead you should design your site both search engine friendly and human friendly. Many people spends lot’s of money and uses latest technologies to achieve the target business by their website, but unluckily sometimes they fail in achieving. So it’s essential to optimize your site in right way, in order to get successful online business by standing ranking-high in major search engines and able to attract lot’s of clients. For optimizing a website always plan a good strategy.

Search Engine Optimization Strategy:

Research your keywords
Check rankings with search engines
URL Submission
The Title tag
Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags
ALT Tags
Content of the page.
Link building
Search Engine Optimization Strategy

It is vital for every website that wants to stand rank-high in major search engines, to plan a strategy before developing or while optimizing an existing website. A well planed strategy can help in achieving the targets easily. A well optimized site attract targeted traffic by attaining very high positions in the search results.

Search Engine Optimization Strategy can including;

Give relevancy Title

A title is nothing but a focal point of the content written in your page. It gives the main idea of whatever written in the page. Whenever search engine searches for any topic it always checks the title and subtitle of the page first. So it becomes important to give an appropriate title and subtitle, sometimes a relevancy keyword can be useful in Title. But remember it should not be too long, at most it could be 80 character long. A short and relevancy title can help to rank higher in search engines.

Title can be defined as:

<Title>Page Title</Title>

Title always follows closing tag and written in Head tag.

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