Tips for finding the perfect search engine optimization company

Posted by Sachin Kumar Airan on May 31st, 2009 | no comments

Looking for an excellent search engine optimization company to help you improve your website? There are plenty of choices out there due to the immensity if the web, but not every search engine optimization company will be a good fit. Therefore, it helps to know a few tips and general guidelines that can help you sort through each search engine optimization company so that you find the one that fits your website’s needs.

There are three major areas that you will want to keep in mind when it comes to choosing a search engine optimization company: budget, skill level, and services. Additionally, you will want to consider what type of time frame you have in mind for assignments, because depending on the size of the search engine optimization company and the size of your website you can expect daily services or weekly services. Of course the amount of potential budgeting you have in mind will play a role in this as well.

One of the first things you will want to look at is the references and prior clients that a search engine optimization company can offer you. Before choosing a search engine optimization company you need to make sure that they are a verifiable source and that they are capable of providing you with the services you need. If a company is legitimate they should be able to point you towards websites they have optimized as examples and be able to offer you with phone numbers or email contacts as references as well.

The purpose of these requests is to allow you to establish that you are contracting with an experienced search engine optimization company that has a vast degree of experience and the proper knowledge to build your website’s SEO value. Of course, keep in mind that it generally takes two to three months to see results on a website which will allow you to also judge how experienced an SEO company is because they should have at least this amount of legitimate experience in order for you to consider them.

The fact that it takes two to three months for results to be evident also means that you place a high level of trust into the company you finally choice since you will essentially be paying them blindly until the results are evident. Thus, it is vital that you see results that prove they are trustworthy and highly skilled when it comes to website optimization so from your side you can never be too cautious.

Finally, you will want to check out the package prices that a search engine optimization can offer you because larger companies may seem to cost more upfront, but will offer you rate breaks on large orders of content, services, etc. Thus, while it may sometimes seem to be more budget conscious to choose a small search engine optimization company in the long run you may actually save more and see larger results from contracting with a larger company.

Techniques in Promoting your Products Online

Posted by Paul Garnett on May 28th, 2009 | no comments

Advertising is a must in a business. If you put up your business without anybody knowing what it is about, you may end up not gaining anything from it. Advertising your business introduces it to people, and attracting sales.

With the introduction of the internet, it provides another venue for businesses to advertise and promote their products and services. Aside from its being new, the internet has also a very wide reach in terms of potential market for your products or services. Cost of advertising online is cheaper also compared to the usual advertising methods.

Advertising using the internet does not simply mean putting or posting your ad on websites. Because there are so many websites in the internet, it also involves many other things so that your site will be easily seen by those who are looking for it. Below are some techniques in advertising on the internet.

First thing to keep in mind when doing internet advertising is that, you should aim to get higher ranks in search engines. If someone is looking for something on the internet, they would normally type the keywords of what they are searching on the search box. When search is clicked, a list of websites appears on the page. For a businessman’s point of view, you should work on making your website appear on the top 5 of that list.

Second, it does not matter if your advertisement is on top of the search engine if your web page is a disaster. No person will purchase a product from an ugly website. Internet display advertisement may be improved through flash animations, videos, and other display enhancements. The more attractive the website, the more customers one will have.

Another internet advertising technique is that always be sure that your website has no wrong grammar and with no defects whatsoever. Bad grammar tends to reflect the personality of a person. As such, be aware of every word posted in your advertisement. Bad grammar means bad impression and in order to avoid this, one must proofread his advertisement thoroughly.

When you put links in your website, make sure that all are working. Do not disappoint a potential customer by leading him to a link that does not work or does not exist. This can be frustrating to an online user that he may leave your site right away.

Finally, advertising online does not only mean having a website for your business. Online advertising does not end there. You should also work on making your site visible to a lot of users, considering that competitors are also building their websites and making their moves to top the list. Forums, referrals and social networking are among the many things you can do to advertise your site.

The techniques in advertising through the internet provided may still be improved through other means, so do not limit yourself to those enumerated.

- You have a website? Let the world know about it.

Posted by Taylor Reaume on May 26th, 2009 | one comment

Everyone knows that when searching for a precise product or service or perhaps a restaurant to eat at in a new town we hop online do a fast search and go with the results that we find, efficiently. This satisfies our desire for things to be convenient in our lives. We do not need things to be anymore advanced than they must be.

So, if you need to reach new purchasers as a businessman then you should make finding you and your business convenient. Your site needs to be quickly found with a fast online search. But, are you aware that to do so, you need to do a little work? You can’t just put up an internet site, making it appealing to the eyes and full of a large amount of fluff.

You cannot just put up a website, making it appealing to the eyes and full of plenty of fluff. No, that’s not all that it takes, there is more. You have to also optimize your internet site so that the search engines, which the majority use to they are searching for the information, products that services that they are attempting to find you.

These search engines rank web sites by keywords, and these keywords are ordered by how frequently folk search for them. Your website is ordered by how often you implement those categorical keywords, the anchor text for links pointing to those pages, as well as other considerations. So the more often and the more accurate your keywords and links, the more likely you are to be found. You can’t climb the ladder of the page rank without having explicit and focused keywords. This comes thru search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is a particularly specialized practice, but one that can be very advantageous to you and your business if utilized correctly. It is a part of your business if invested in correctly can help to grow the recognition of your site online and send new consumers to you.

So, if your looking to gain new targeted customers that are looking in particular for what you must offer, then look no further than having your site search engine optimized. This can put you in the right ranks. The ones that you would like to be in, and the ones which may bring about the best results for you and your business. After all new business doesn’t happen by coincidental, no, but rather it occurs by express centered work. You can do this for your business with search engine optimization. It is the fastest way to put the internet site to work for you today.

SEO Elite Software Review Strategies

Posted by Michael Fleischner on May 24th, 2009 | one comment

Most people think of SEO as something that happens after a website has been built. Nothing could be further from the truth. Effective search engine optimization begins even before a website is built. This will save you time and money over the long term, helping you to improve rankings and can be automated with the help of SEO Elite software review.

Ideally, you want your website to be designed properly in order to allow search engines to easily crawl your content. This can be done easily by applying some simple SEO Elite Software related techniques before your web site code is complete.

One of the most essential aspects of website design is choosing a format that is search engine friendly. This means that the site is using html, a common programming language for the web. Simple code allows for easy access to your content and supports other on page optimization factors that can improve your rankings.

Every website should start with a basic navigation and special attention to key coding elements. The most important of these elements is your meta tags. The meta tags are found, if used properly, at the very top of your web page code. SEO Elite software review ensures that your web site pages include are your title, keywords, and descriptions tags. The meta tags tell search engine spiders what your site is about and allows for certain checks and balances to take place.

On you page, highlight the content you want search engines to see with large, bold tags. Whether you are using H1 tags or simply placing your titles in big, bold language, you want emphasis. Search engines take notice. Be careful though because you want your site to be aesthetically appealing and not chase browsers away.

In addition to applying simply, yet effective on page optimization techniques, you must consider long-range SEO strategies. Using SEO Elite software review, you can determine which aspects of your site are ready for prime time and which need to be further developed before working on off page optimization techniques.

In particular, consider adding pages that you can add to over time that support link building and accessibility for search engine spiders. Be sure to include:

Include a site map that includes a comprehensive listing of all web site pages. There are a number of tools, such as SEO Elite software that can create a site map for you. Alternatively, Google offers a site map upload tool that can help you succeed in the area of site map development.

One of the best ways to attract links to your website is with the help of link partners. Reciprocal link partners are established when you offer real estate on your web page in exchange for a link on their web site or blog. There is some debate as to the effectiveness of link exchanges but I feel they are valuable when you are first starting out with a new web site.

Submission pages that encourage new content. One of the most powerful seo techniques is the addition of new content. Make it easy for your users to add or submit content to your website. When search engines see new content, they rejoice. Don’t underestimate how important it is to make it simple for your browsers to add or submit content.

When focusing on search engine optimization, especially with a new website, follow the basic ideas outlined above. There are a number of other factors to consider as well. However, you should always start with a strong foundation – a site design that meets basic SEO standards but one that also supports your long range search engine optimization goals.

Create Phenomenal Traffic to Your Website With Articles

Posted by Porfirio G Krasternak on May 23rd, 2009 | no comments

The submission of articles to the article banks is a well known method of generating traffic. While you may not accomplish much in the near future by learning how to write and submit articles, knowing how can serve you for a long time and is well worth the effort of learning and using to your greatest benefit. Though you may not feel up to writing Moby Dick because you don’t have any writing ability but you are likely wrong. You can provide information about your website and your products because you know exactly what they are. All that is necessary is that you know the rules for effective article writing. Of most importance is the headline or title. This MUST have key words relating to your website and your products. The first thing that eZine publishers or other website owners look at when deciding to publish your article are the key words in the title because they know that the search engines look at those.

* Note: The search engines are the method by which people find products or information that they are looking for on the Internet. To find those products or that information, they type key words into the search boxes of the search engines. For example; they might type in fish bait or fishing lures. The results that the search engines provide are based on the key words that the searcher uses.

Your article title or headline MUST grab the reader’s attention. Simply using a title of “Making Money” probably won’t do. The title must grab the reader by the throat and not let him go. It must make the reader want to keep reading. “Making Money Online”… well, not very good either. How about “Making Money Online in Your Houseshoes” or “Making a Bundle Online Before Breakfast”. Something to capture the reader’s attention if they are interested in making money on the internet.

The next most important words are in the first line of the first paragraph of your articls. People surfing the internet today have terribly short attention span and mostly skim for information unless it is information that they think is going to solve a problem, make life better for them or serve a need. As you can see, the title and first line are bait and hook used to encourage a reader to continue on and read to the end of the article. Again, the first line must contain the key words and grab attention. “The women were hanging all over my car looking at all the neat gadgets I had”. If you were looking for attention from women, you would keep reading.

The article banks want short articles. Brief, in fact! The longest an article should be is 400 words but closer to 300 is better. You can get carried away and end up with an article that is 1000 words or more when discussing a subject in which you are interested and know a lot about. If you wind up with a long wordy article just break it down into three or four short articles.

Short sentences and short paragraphs will keep the reader’s attention better than long wordy sentences or paragraphs. Your article should be a joy to read.

Go easy on the exclamation points, as well. One exclamation point indicates importance or excitement… a half a dozen are just rude.

Your resource box at the end of the article is the part that is most important to you. Other website owners or E-zine publishers who download and reproduce your article are required to include your resource box. This box needs to contain your full name, your contact information and, most importantly, a link to your website. That link is the little thing that is going to help increase traffic for you.

Warning! Do NOT word-wrap your url! It must be typed out in full, http://www.whatever.com. Not all E-zine editors send out their newsletters and E-zines using email programs that support word-wrapped links so it is possible to ruin your own purpose by word-wrapping your website url.

Submitting Articles: You can find article banks and article repositories on the Internet by simple doing a search for them using your favorite search engine. When you have located them, you must submit your articles according to the guidelines that each site sets forth.

You will likely be told that there is software available that you can use to automatically submit your articles to banks and repositories…and there is, in fact, such software. The problem with the automated submission software is that most of the larger (and more effective) banks and repositories dont accept automated submissions. So, while this software can in fact save you time by submitted to the smaller sites, it isnt going to help you much with the bigger sites.

Yes, submitting articles is time consuming and tedious (not to mention boring) work but it is work that can provide your site with a lot of targeted traffic. Each person who reads an article that you have written will also be exposed to the link to your site. If the article is good and if it provides good information, these people will visit your site. They may buy what you are selling or they may opt-in to your mailing list… or maybe they will do both. By the way, there are services that will do article submissions for you. Of course this is a paid service.

The best solution and one I use is Unique Article Wizard. UAW can submit unique articles to hundreds of eZine publishers at the push of a button. Spend a few hours creating your article, Push Submit, sit back, and watch the traffic to your site increase astronomically.

15 Email-Marketing Best Practices

Posted by admin on May 21st, 2009 | no comments

By Mitchell Harper

As you may know, most people now spend more time reading their emails than they do surfing the web. Email is one of the most powerful mediums that you can use to talk to visitors, customers and prospects.

In this article I will discuss 15 best practices that you can use everyday in your email marketing activities. Used wisely and consistently, there’s no doubt you’ll see an increased response from your subscribers — whether it be for more feedback, more product/seminar registrations, or even more orders.

The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigorous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customers inboxes. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and deleted.

To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam — and deleted before they even get to your subscribers — avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘$$$’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc in both the subject line and the content of your email.

Both web pages and emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.

Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link — such as this — as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you.

If you were standing in a crowded mall, which of these would get your attention: “HEY, YOU!” or “HEY JOHN” (assuming your name is John). The power of personalization can and should be used in your emails. In-fact, by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. Why? Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

If you want to grow your mailing list, then there are 2 things that you absolutely must have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. In some countries, it’s actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed — courteously — from your mailing list.

Don’t get accused of spamming — always, and I mean always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a special link back to your email-marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (American Pacific Time) on a Wednesday.

An auto responder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time interval after someone subscribes to your mailing list. Auto responders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.

For example, if you provide a free newsletter, you could setup 3 auto responders for new subscribers: the first is sent 1 hour after they subscribe. It contains a thank you message and a link to get 10% off your newly released eBook.

The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe, telling them about your community message boards, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them a special deal on becoming a paid member of your site.

Auto responders help your subscribers build trust in both your company and your brand, and this can help make it easier when trying to close sales in the future.

If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

Create a template for your newsletter and whenever you need to create a new issue, use that template as the basis for each issue.

When sending a regular email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

When your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using ‘OurSite Newsletter Issue #1′, use ‘OurSite Newsletter: 10 Tips for Financial Freedom’.

Free is overused these days, especially on the Internet. However, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list, then create or source a product of value to your visitors (such as an eBook or discount coupon) and offer it to them for free when they signup for your newsletter.

To make sure they don’t simply type any email address into your subscription form, setup an auto responder to send them the free bonus 1 hour after they subscribe to your newsletter.

Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it’s interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue on reading.

When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-thrus, and ultimately the most sales.

Add value to your website, build trust in your visitors, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by setting up an email-based learning course. To do this, simply create a series of auto responders (for example, 5) containing unique content. Then, schedule the first one to be sent after 24 hours, the second after 48 hours, etc.

Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products. Here’s a sample signature:

Regards,
John Doe.
President – Company XYZ.
Visit our website at http://www.companyxyz.com
Unsubscribe from this newsletter at http://www.companyxyz.com/unsubscribe…

By implementing the 15 best practices described in this article, you can take your email marketing to a whole new level –- attracting more subscribers, and building both your brand equity and credibility at the same time.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to do effective Email Marketing? (espreson.com)
• Does Email Marketing Work In This Day Of Web 2.0 And Social Media? (newmediachatter.com)
• How Email Blasts Work (megoagain.com)
• One-on One Marketing in a digital age! (ceoworld.biz)

Optimizing Your Web Site for the Search Engines

Posted by admin on May 20th, 2009 | no comments

By Mitchell Harper

Introduction

One of the best and most obvious ways to gain new web design clients is by ranking better in the search engines. If you can’t afford to hire a professional search engine optimization (SEO) company then read this article all the way through because I’m about to teach you a few strategies that we’ve personally used to get Interspire.com ranked on the front page of Google for a lot of competitive search terms.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (or SEO as it’s affectionately called) is the ongoing process of tweaking and modifying your website in an effort to rank competitively in the search engines for one of more keyowords that people will use to search for your business.

As a web designer I’m sure you’d agree that if more people were able to find your site in the search engines then you could dramatically increase the number of clients you have, right? Well it’s the same for most businesses, and a good SEO plan is where you should start.

The “One Hour a Day, 30 Day” SEO Plan

Search engine optimization is part science, part art and part luck. The good news is that we can use a proven scientific approach to help your website rank better in the search engines, but you first have to decide which keyword(s) you want your site to rank for.

If you’re a web designer in Los Angeles, then here are a few examples of keywords you absolutely would want to be on the front page of the search engines for:

• Los Angeles Web Designer
• Web Designer California
• Web Design Company Los Angeles
• etc…

To determine which keywords you want to rank for just ask yourself: “If I were one of my potential customers, which words would I use to find my company?”. You should be able to come up with at least a handful of keywords.

If you can dedicate just one hour a day (for 30 days) to the search engine optimization plan I’m about to show you then there’s a great chance that you’ll be able to significantly improve how your web site ranks in the search engines for the keywords people are using to find you.

#1: Getting Links Back to Your Website

This is hands down the most important search engine optimization strategy you can spend your time on. When another website links back to yours, Google sees this as a positive vote for your website, and as such will take this into account when determining which sites should be at the top of the pile.

The more sites you have that link back to you, the higher your site will appear in the search results, however there is one main factor to consider with this strategy, and that’s the credibility of the sites linking back to yours.

Google’s PageRank algorithm is a measure of the popularity of a website. If you download the Google toolbar you can see the PageRank of any site you visit. It’s just a measure between 0 and 10 – 0 means the site is new and has no popularity and a PageRank of 10 means the site is one of the most trusted and popular sites on the Internet.

Interspire.com for example has a PageRank of 7. Yahoo.com has a PageRank of 10.CNN.com has a PageRank of 9, Business.com has a PageRank of 7, etc.

When looking for sites to link back to yours, the higher the PageRank the more “points” Google will award you for having that site linking to you, thus pushing you higher up in the search results for your keywords.

The quickest and cheapest way to get sites linking back to your site is to send them an email and just ask for it, but what type of sites should you request links from? In general they should be similar in topic to your site, so as a web designer you might request links back from sites that talk about web design, marketing, attracting new leads and customers, etc.

A link acquisition strategy over the medium/long term is to get serious about publishing high quality articles on your web site that others will link back to. We’ve been using this strategy for years and we’ve written dozens of articles that are linked to from all over the Internet. Because we don’t have to actively solicit these links, it makes it much easier to get links using quality articles.

So what should you write about and how often should you write? One article a week is a great start. Aim for 500-1,000 words and write about what you know: how to choose a web designer, why it’s important to have a usable website, how to create a web page in Dreamweaver, etc. These are topics your potential customers will expect you to know about and after reading your articles they will come to respect you as an authority on web design.

#2: On-Page Search Engine Optimization

On-page keyword optimization involves making changes to existing pages on your website so they include the keywords you want to rank in the search engines for. On-page optimization includes a number of different “sub strategies”, which are:

• Keyword density: How often do the keywords you want to rank for appear on your page? This is measured as a percentage, such as 5.8%. So let’s say you want to rank on Google for “red sports cars”. On most pages of your site you’ll want to include the text “red sports cars” and also variations of this phrase, such as “red cars that are sporty”, “sports cars that are red”, “sports cars”, etc.

  There’s no hard and fast rule, but you generally want a keyword density of about 7-12% for the keywords you want to rank for. That means that if you have 100 words on your page, 7-12 of them should be “red”, “sports” or “car”. You can check your keyword density at www.ranks.nl.
  

• Header tags: You absolutely MUST include the keywords you want to rank for in a <h1>…</h1> tag on your site. H1 tags tell the search engines that the text between them is important, and you should aim for just one <h1> tag on each page as close to the top as you can. In our example you might use <h1>Red Sports Cars</h1> on one page and <h1>Luxury Red Sports Cars</h1> on another page.
  
• Page title: This is the most important on-page thing you can optimize. Your page title is the text that’s used to form the link back to your site from the search engines, so it needs to include the keywords you want to rank for, and usually in variations, such as <title>Red sports cars, luxury sports cars, racing sports cars , red sports cars</title>
  
• Internal linking structure: You want to use the keywords you want to rank for to link between pages on your site. For example, on your home page you might link to a category page using the text “sports cars” and on that category page you would link back to your home page with the text “red sports car”. This is an internal two-way link, and although internal links don’t hold nearly as much weight as external ones, you should link to different pages on your site using a few different combinations of your keywords.
  
• Keywords at the very top of the page: You should always include your main keywords as close to the top of the page as you can, because Google will look at the text on your site from top-to-bottom and will treat the text closer to the top of the page with a higher importance.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to search engine optimization than I’ve talked about here, however what I’ve mentioned above is a good place to start if you can’t afford to hire an SEO company or want to get started learning about SEO so that you can eventually offer it to your clients as an additional paid service.

Get A Grant For Your E-Commerce Project

Posted by admin on May 20th, 2009 | no comments

Local Enterprise Technical Assistance Scheme (LETAS)

Provides Singapore-based SMEs  a grant to hire external experts to improve your management and operations.

For who?

• All local businesses that want to improve their business with the help of a consultant.
• Your business qualifies as long as:
  • 30% – 100% of your shareholding is local
  • your group fixed assets are worth S$0 – S$15 million*
  • you have 0 – 200 employees (for companies in the services sector)*

* Computed on a group basis i.e. checking up to three levels for corporate shareholders holding 20% – 100% of the total shareholding in your company and one level down where your company owns 51% – 100% of shareholding in a subsidiary company.

For what?

• To subsidise the cost of hiring a consultant to implement quality management and IT systems (e.g. upgrading of computer systems or ISO projects)

How much?

• LETAS provides assistance to defray up to 50% of the total consultancy cost or capped at the following grant amount, whichever is lower.
  

  Project Type	Grant Cap
  Quality Management Systems	S$5,000
  IT E-Commerce	S$5,000
  IT Implementation	S$10,000

Things to note

• SPRING will take into account previous grants awarded to you under LETAS.
• You can only apply for LETAS once for IT projects.
• Hardware and software costs for IT projects are not supported.
• Certification fees for Quality Management System projects are not supported.

Google SEO Basics for Beginners

Posted by admin on May 19th, 2009 | no comments

By Eddie Machaalani

As many of us web developers already know, Google is rated by many as the number one search engine in the world. We personally know that our websites get about 90% of their search engine traffic direct from Google searches.

Getting indexed by Google can be a pain, but getting highly placed rankings for specific keywords seems to be the nut that not many web developers without SEO (search engine optimization) experience or seo training can crack.

Today we’re going to give you an informative primer on the basics of search engine optimization techniques — many of which we use everyday to optimize our websites and stay ahead of our competitors.

We personally believe in the “practice what you preach” approach to all things business related — especially SEO. So, before we continue, here’s a sample of keywords and Google rankings for some of our websites:

Step 1. Choosing The Right Keywords

Choosing the right keywords to base your site optimization around is an important first step. General or generic keywords are usually not the best approach, and sometimes it’s better to be a little more specific and focus on niche keywords relating to your product or service.

For example, let’s talk about www.devedit.com — DevEdit is our WYSIWYG HTML editing component that drops into browser-based applications.

The problem is, there are a LOT of WYSIWYG HTML editors, but how can we get DevEdit to appear in Google’s top 10 rankings? Well, let’s see. Trying to optimize for the keyword “HTML” alone would be a tough task, as it’s too general. There are HTML editors, HTML tutorials, HTML articles, etc.

We need to be more specific, which means:

1. Targeting a more suitable market that is looking for a content editing solution
2. Competing with fewer websites targeting the same keywords
3. Optimizing for keywords that people actually use when performing searches

Targeting a suitable market will depend on your website, as well as the products and services you offer. Try to be specific with your keywords, and remember that people no longer use single keyword search phrases – the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.

For example, if you’re optimizing for a web development site and you’re located in Sydney, Australia, use keywords such as “web development Sydney” or “web development services Australia”.

To find out how many websites are competing with your keywords — either intentionally or not — simply do a search on Google and note down how many results are returned. In our case, for “online html editor”, we’re competing with 9,080,000 sites. The more sites that are competing for your keywords, the harder it will be to get on the front page.

Alternatively, to get a rough indication of how many people are actually searching for the keywords you want to optimize your site for, use the Overture search suggestion tool. It’s not exact, and doesn’t measure Google searches, but it does give a very good estimate.

The Overture search suggestion tool will also provide you with a list of similar keywords, based on the keywords you enter. This can be a great way to find other keywords to optimize your site for.

As a rough guideline, try to optimize every page on your site for a different search phrase. Each search phrase should contain 2 to 3 highly targeted keywords.

Step 2. Your URL and Title Tag

Two of the most determining factors in Google’s ranking are your domain name and title tag. For example, a domain name such as:
http://www.web-development-sydney.com will generally get ranked higher than http://www.companyname.com, assuming that they had identical keywords and page content.

For some of us, keywords in the domain name look too unprofessional, and we’ve already registered our domain, so it’s too late to change. An alternative — and also a useful tactic — is to add your keywords into the names of your pages, such as

http://www.companyname.com/web-development-services.html

Your title tag is equally as important as your domain name. Using keywords in your title tag can improve your Google ranking significantly. Trying to achieve a balance of professionalism with keyword density in the title tag however is sometimes a little more difficult.

Going back to our example of a web development company earlier, a good title tag would be:

<title>”Company name provides professional affordable web development services in Sydney Australia.”</title>

Usually, the closer to the front of your title tag the keywords are placed, the better.

Step 3. H1 Tags and Keyword Density

<h1> tags seem to have been depreciated by stylesheets these days, and are not used as often as they used to be.

The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you’re using a <h1> tag, then the text in between this tag must be more important than the content on the rest of the page. Here’s a quick example:

<h1>Google sees this text as more important</h1>
<p>… than this text</p>

By default, H1 tags aren’t the prettiest in terms of formatting, so using a CSS style to override the default look is usually a good idea:

H1 { color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px }

Sprinkling keywords throughout your page content can also improve your sites keyword density. Keyword density simply means the ratio of optimized keywords to the rest of the content on your page. It is usually expressed as a percentage, and should be between 7% and 10% for each page on your site.

Don’t overdo the keyword density, however, but don’t overlook it either. A good example would be:

Before:

• Company name provides web design and site management services to our clients.

After:

• Company name provides web development services to the Sydney region in Australia

Notice how we use the keywords more efficiently the second time around?

Step 4. Links, Links and More Links

And this leads us to the toughest part of the Google SEO process — back-links. Back links are websites that link directly to your website. The general principal is the more back links you have, the higher your pages will be ranked, as your website must be good if so many other sites are linking back to it.

If you run a web development company, then adding a simple link to the bottom of each of your client’s websites, such as:

<a href=http://www.yoursite.com>Web development by Company Name</a>

… (With your clients permission of course) can help boost your back links, which will help boost your ranking position in searches.

Submitting your site to dmoz.org, Yahoo! and other directories is also an important step to increase the number of sites linking back to yours. Do remember however, that setting up back links takes time. I would recommend emailing 5-10 websites each and every day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant but not competitive) e.g. – If you sell chocolate, partnering with a company that sells Roses may just be a good idea. Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100 or so sites happily linking back to yours!

Google can be one tough search engine to crack. Hopefully, however, in this article we’ve provided you with enough basic tips to get started optimizing both yours and your clients website.

Building an Email Marketing List

Posted by admin on May 16th, 2009 | one comment

by Jeffrey Gray

You can’t take random ingredients and expect to bake great Lasagna. You need specific ingredients and instructions. If you’re buying email lists with unqualified prospects, it can turn out to be a recipe for disaster.

Building vs. Purchasing Email Lists

As a marketer you need to think like a consumer.  Consumers are smart, and they know what they want. If they receive an email from an unknown source, they will usually ignore it or delete it.  If, however, the email comes from a trusted company, they are much more likely to take a look.

By using purchased lists, you’re exposing your business to problems. False or out-of-date email addresses. Spam complaints.  All of which will eventually lead to a list that is a waste of your marketing dollars.

When you build a list, there are benefits that come with your subscriber base. You have the opportunity to track your emails (who received them, who opened them, etc). You can separate your list and segment it to those who want to receive certain emails or specific information. But more than anything else, you have a list of people who want to read your emails. Those can refer their friends to your business and help it grow through word of mouth.

Whether you create an email list from scratch or build an existing email list, you’re getting qualified leads of customers who are sincerely interested in what you have to offer them—otherwise they wouldn’t have signed up. You want to use that to your advantage—and you can, with targeted email marketing

Building an Effective Email List to Succeed in the e-World

Businesses can use email marketing effectively to develop strong leads, build relationships, and inexpensively get their message out.

Whenever customers are strolling through, browsing, purchasing, or just gathering information, you can be collecting email addresses. Your business is always open, readily available, and you can begin to build your email list by following a few simple suggestions.

Assure Personal Privacy

Consumers are very hesitant to give out personal information and email addresses have become a part of people, some don’t want to share. Gain their trust by reassuring them that their email address and any personal information will be guarded by you. Let them know that they will only receive a certain number of emails per month.

Keep it Simple

The easier it is to do something, the more likely it is someone will do it. If signing up for your email list is as easy as typing or writing their address—you will see many more addresses signing up.

Deliver on Your Content Promises

Make promises on what they should expect to receive in their emails from you and deliver (literally and figuratively). By letting the recipients know what they will be getting in their emails from you for signing up they will want to open the emails—to see what you have to offer.

Offer Choices

Democracy is a beautiful thing. Giving your subscribers choices of what they wish to receive from you gives you the control to cater to your customers. This also gives them satisfaction of not having to sift through irrelevant material.

9 Ways to Collect Email Addresses

Your website – If nothing else, use your website. If you’re not promoting your email list on your website, you’re not using your website well enough.

Current email lists – Using current email lists to build your own email list is an essential part of your growth. If your current recipients see something of value to them, they may think their friends will benefit as well. Allowing them to pass your email along may easily add more to your list.

In-store sign-up – When checking out or browsing around allow people to sign up for your email list by way of sign up forms.

Contests - Register participants address and announce the winner through your next newsletter list.

Coupons & discounts – Offer special incentives through email only, allow them to pass along to friends.

Advertisements & Direct mail – Never pass up the opportunity to inform readers about your email community. Direct them to your website or have them send an email to you requesting their addition.

Business cards – On the back of your business card, promote your website and the opportunity to receive informative emails or newsletters.

Trade shows & Networking Events – Offer collateral material that requests them to sign-up on their own.

Seminars - Give seminars on your area of expertise and have people sign-up to your mailing list for future seminars, discounted rates, and other announcements.

Be creative with these ideas, mix and match, or come up with your own ways to collect emails.

Maintaining your list

Just as important as building an email marketing list is maintaining your current list.
A few things to remember when doing this are to:

Build relationships with your customers—they will stay your customers longer if they feel connected. Ask for feedback and respond immediately. If they know that you care about them, they’ll stick around, as with any relationship.

Offer real value to your email readers; make them want to open your email each and every time. Whether this value is in the form of discounts, product information, tips, or fun stories, they should feel a need to read what you have to say.

Keep your emails interesting and your e-marketing will thrive. Send out only as many emails a month as you can keep appealing. Put some thought into what you want to communicate and you will have more valuable information.

Don’t hassle the loyal customers that have offered to receive your emails. If you don’t constantly bombard them, they’ll appreciate you more. You are privileged to have them on your list and you can respect that by not abusing it.

Go Build Your Empire!

First, realize that you need to build a list, not purchase one. Planning is essential in building your subscriber numbers. After you decide your objectives, use the previous suggestions to grow your list. Maintaining your subscriber base may be the most important thing you can do. What’s the point of creating something just to let it fall apart?

The Colosseum still stands in Rome after 2000 years. It was constructed well, and even with some deterioration there has been a constant effort to preserve.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Email Marketing’s future is looking good (b2bemailmarketing.com)