Web Business Resource

by John Gergye

My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common rookie search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three deadly search engine marketing sins.

Inadequate Keyword Research

Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?

Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword phrase generates way more traffic than the singular form. For example “dog dishes” rather than “dog dish”.

Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on the singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.

Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.

Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most out of that day.

Search for your target keyword in Google.

Visit the top ranking sites. Use the “View Source” feature of Internet Explorer to check out the keyword meta tag of each site. You’re looking for a site listing lots of keywords there. Do this with each of the top listings or until you find one stuffed to the gills with keywords. Ah-ha! There’s your starting point for your list of likely keyword phrases.

Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have a long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.

Enhance your list further using this tool:

http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtool-beta.htm.

It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and Overture.

Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.

Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.

That gives you the strongest keywords with the most searches. (And yes, I realize KEI assumes all search engine listings are of equal value. But I did say this was “quick and dirty” didn’t I? However if you want another approach that improves on KEI there’s a spreadsheet available at http://www.seo-works.com/seo-resources/keyword-effectiveness-rank.html)

Anyway, once you’re sorted your keywords in some way to highlight the most profitable, simply take the top 25 on the list and create content for those first. No, not every one will be a natural born traffic magnet. But enough of them will be to get the ball rolling.

Repeat with the next 25. Don’t stop until you have at least 100 pages of hot content.

Remember, two or three word keyword phrases are usually your best bets. And I really like keyword phrases that are actually several keyword phrases in one. For example “irish setter dog dishes” gives “irish setter”, “irish setter dog”, “dog”, “dog dishes”, “setter dog dishes”.

Site Bloat

Twice this week I was asked to look at sites that would have let me read War and Peace while waiting for them to come up. And no visitor is going to have a copy of that handy.

To avoid losing any precious visitors lose the huge graphics. One of the sites had a graphic 501K in size! No wonder it took nearly two minutes to load up on a 56K modem.

Then too lose the Flash - unless you have a very good reason for using it. Even then lose the Flash.

If you’re wondering how your site’s download time measures up test it here: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm

It won’t cost anything to find out. But a slow loading site can cost you plenty. Because as the Net Mechanics follow up reports says, it’s a good idea to keep your page load times under about 12 seconds on a 28.8 modem. Otherwise your visitors will be wearing out the back button trying to escape.

Too Few Links

Did you know links can account for up to 80% of your success with Google? Yet someone else complained to me about how much work it took to get them.

Well doh! Ever think that maybe that’s why (in part) Google assigns so much value to links? Because you can’t quite as easily game links as you can on page content? Meaning you actually have to work to get links. Both by having link worthy content and by actively seeking them out on a regular basis.

It’s a given that most niches require you have a healthy collection of links to be competitive. Yet if you’re lucky enough to be in a niche that doesn’t, but you do, then you can easily dominate those rankings.

Anyway in a nutshell you can easily avoid these three search engine sins. Do your keyword homework. Keep your pages on a strict diet. And don’t forget link up with as many other quality sites as you can.

Do all that and you’re well on your way to search engine success. Ignore this advice and you’re, well you know, your Google goose is probably cooked. Leaving you perpetually stuck in Google purgatory.

Copyright 2006 John Gergye

About The Author: John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated eBook “Traffic From Google in 35 Days”. Find out more here: www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz and get the free special report “Coming Out On Top”.

by Barry Fenning

1. Optimise every page on your website

The major search engines are not looking at individual websites and ranking them, they are ranking pages from every website in the world. This means that if your website contains more than one page you should optimise for the specific content that is found on each page.

Optimising each webpage is overlooked by so many websites within Ireland and can be the difference between competing for a highly competitive keyword phrase such as “Irish Hotels” and competing for a much less competitive keyword phrase such as “Hotels in County Galway”. After that they can check out the rest of your website that is all about “Irish Hotels”.

2. Pick appropriate keyword phrases

This is the single most important thing to do when it comes to optimising your website for search engines. The keywords that your potential customers type into Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves are the keywords that your site should be using within the specific areas of your webpage (see below; Optimizing your Page Titles and Optimizing your Content). There are a number of useful keyword research tools available on the web. The most recommended and user-friendly are Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. Both offer trial versions.

3. Optimizing your Page Titles

All of the major search engines have 100’s of different algorithms that compute where your webpage should be listed for different keyword searches. Putting your keywords within the Title description (the blue bar you will see at the top of your screen) of your pages is one of the most important SEO techniques and will help your website climb through the rankings and allow your visitors to remember exactly what your page is all about when they save it to their “favourites”.

4. Optimizing your Page Content

It is sometimes very difficult to write content for your website. Not only do you need put the information that you want the visitor to see in front of them in an easy-to-read style, you also have to keep in mind the keywords or keyphrases that your page is targeting so that you can rank better within search engines.

One of the best pieces of advice that I have come across is to write for your visitors and include the keywords and keyphrases as much as makes sense. Read what you written out loud to yourself and a few others. If it sounds stupid… lather, rinse, and repeat.

5. Create an inbound linking strategy

Submitting your site to online directories is a very beneficial way to drive targeted traffic to your website. People will find your listing in a directory and click on the link to go directly to your site.

This not only brings visitors to your website, but it also creates links for search engine “spiders” or “robots” to find your website and index your pages within their results. If your site doesn’t have a link pointing to it on the World Wide Web the search engines will never find it and you will never see any traffic from Google or the other big ones.

6. Descriptively labeling your links and images (aka the anchor text)

This technique is both common sense and good practice. Telling your visitors what the link that they are going to click on allows them to know exactly what they are going to be directed to. Saying “click here” is not enough to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase which is another one of those many factors search engines that into account when it comes to ranking your web pages.

7. Make sure your site is spider-friendly

Your website may look fantastic. You and your web designer may be talented graphic designers that can make Flash and Javascript dazzle your visitors with a show that would put RiverDance to shame. However, if your website contains Flash and Javascript it’s important to know that search engine spiders can’t read this code (or appreciate the effort you put into the design). The way around this is to provide navigation alternatives to allow the spiders crawl deep within your website and index the web pages within their results.

8. Create Fresh Content

When you are optimizing your website properly you will see a trend. If you are doing something that benefits your websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for it.

Search engines do tend to like websites that create fresh content regardless of the format. If they know any given site is adding new articles on a frequent basis, they will come around often to index it.

Blogs and forums are effective and easy ways of adding new information to your site on a regular basis.

However, if your only purpose of setting up a blog or a forum is for better search engine rankings then there really is no point in doing it. Only add a forum if it contributes something beneficial to your website and if you have the traffic to make it interactive enough for visitors to return to it. And, only add a blog if you have something of interest to say on a regular basis.

9. Do not think that you can trick Search Engines

As noted before, “If you are doing something that benefits your websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for it”.

If you try to trick the search engines by hiding keyword phrases in your pages by making the text colour the same as the background colour, hiding keyword phrases in tiny font, joining link farms, or any other sneaky practice your sites will be removed from the search engines and it will take you a long time to get back in (and you will also have to spend more time cleaning up your website before they will accept you).

10. Offer something unique

If your website offers something that is unique and interesting to your target market and it is properly optimized (by applying all of the techniques that are listed above) you will not only rank well within the major search engines, you will also get the added benefit of people linking to your website in forums, blogs, and through other websites which will send your site more visitors and create more inbound links which will help it rank higher.

About the Author: Barry Fenning is the owner of Website Promotion Articles - A website that is aimed at people that are new to the area of online marketing. The articles available on the website are suitable for people that want to learn how to conduct effective SEO campaigns. There are also a number of more “advanced” articles suitable for experienced webmasters.

by Mihaela Lica

SEO experts call SEO a science. That’s not so far from the truth. If ten years ago SEO meant inserting some keywords in the Meta tags, nowadays SEO is growing and transforming with a tremendous speed. What works today may not work in three months from now on. The search engines are changing their algorithms so often that getting high rankings in their results has become a fierce competition.

But whether this competition means hiring expensive SEO experts to implement “strategies that work… guaranteed!” or not, it’s still a matter of debate. Well, yes, there are SEO techniques achievable solely with money, but as already mentioned above search engines change algorithms fast. Is it really worth to invest huge amounts in short-term results?

Do you honestly believe that there are SEO secrets safe-guarded by the SEO experts? There are not. Getting high rankings in the search engines is not the result of an undisclosed alchemy. Getting high rankings implies hard work, dedication and… sure: some spending.

So let’s take a look at what you can do alone to boost search engine results positioning and increase traffic to your site, supposing you are not familiar with web coding and you’ve just begun your online business.

Step One: Domain Strategy

So you want to sell your products online, let’s say wine. What you need to do is get a domain related to your field of activity. For wine (please note: this is just an example, not advertising for any website) a domain such as http://www.wine-pages.com/ will do just fine, because, as you see, it contains your main keyword “wine”. Once you’ve purchased your domain and chosen your domain host, (please no free hosting providers) place it online as a single landing page. Instead of “under construction” write on that page some basic information about your company, provide contact details, write a short summary of what you hope to achieve with your website or what your potential customers could find there, and specify the expected launching date.

Step Two: Promotion Strategy Part One

Yes, you’ve got that right. Start promoting your website. Immediately. It’s true, you don’t have a full operational website just yet, but you do want it indexed in the major search engines and you’ll definitely need a few back links to get those high rankings you dream about. At this point in your ranking strategy stay away from press releases, but do write relevant articles related to your field of expertise. If your site is about wines, then write an article explaining how wine could benefit human health and what dangers are related to it. Don’t forget to include a link to your website in the anchor text (also called “about the author” or “resource box”) and submit your article to a few reliable article submission sites. Searchwarp or GoArticles are very good for this purpose. Writing articles leads us to…

Step Three: Content Strategy

Write your own content. Please don’t copy! It’s not ethic. You don’t want your visitors to read your pages and leave saying: hey, I’ve read that somewhere. Write your pages with your visitors in mind, but make sure you consider the search engines as well. It’s not so difficult to write optimised content. Let’s see: you sell wine. What kind of wine? Red. That’s good, so choose “red wines” as your main keyword phrase. But there are too many companies selling red wines. You should then optimise your content for something more specific than that. Where is this wine produced? California? Perfect: California Red Wines. Well, that’s your main keyword phrase.

But it is not enough to choose one phrase. Let’s think about a second phrase to bring more targeted traffic to your website. What about “homemade red wine”? It could work if that’s really what you are selling. Think about it: don’t deceive your visitors hoping to rank higher in the SERP! At the end, it doesn’t matter how many hits you get to your site if no one buys your products.

As you see, it’s not such a philosophy to choose your keywords. Just think what best describes your product and you’ve got it right.

You’ve got your two main keyword phrases. Now start writing your content.

Place your main keyword phrase ONCE in the title (header):

Example: California Red Wines for Special Dinner Parties

Write your content. Try to write at least 300 words and include your main keyword phrase two-three times in the text. Two times for the second phrase will do just fine. Also include a few variations of the words in the main keyword phrases: Californian, reddish, wines, vineyard, winery, home, etc. Make sure your content is readable. Read it our loud. How does it sound? Well if you like it, you’re done. That’s all the optimising you need for the content.

Step Four: Write the Meta Tags

Yes, you can do it yourself. You write the Meta tags and the web coder will know exactly what to do with them.

The main Meta-tags you can write are: title, description, keywords.

You wrote your own content and chosen your own keywords. Remember? You’ve got two main keyword phrases: “California Red Wines” and “Homemade Red Wine”. That’s your Meta Title tag: California Red Wines | Homemade Red Wine. Please note: there are no “and”, “or” in the Meta title, but your very own keyword phrases. Many search engines use the title tag to determine website relevancy. As these keywords are moderately repeating in your text, you are already on the right path.

The second important tag is the page description tag. That’s also a central for a few search engines. Keep it short, to the point and try to include some keywords there too. Moderately. Don’t spam the search engines! The description should be written like a sales pitch, calling potential visitors to action: “Buy full of flavour homemade Californian wines from our company! Taste Californian winemaking tradition with every sip!”

About this description: is short, to the point, keyword rich and appealing. Both search engines and visitors are going to like it. There is no exaggeration there, no “best of” no “extraordinary”. Just the metaphor “taste tradition” increases the value of the simple statement: “full of flavour wines”.

Meta keywords… well, you already know them: California red wines, homemade red wine, winery, winemaking, Californian, home. The shorter your keyword tag, the better.

Step Five: Chose a Web Designer

A complete wed development service is costly. If you wrote your texts alone, you already know why. But there are web companies offering low cost solutions for small businesses: simple coding, no text optimisation, and no search engine submission. Hey! You don’t need it anyway. If you’ve followed the first four steps, you are already far! Just insist that your web designer creates a user-friendly layout, respects the Meta tags you wrote, includes relevant alt attributes to your images and provides a valid html code. Ask your web coder to stay away from frames and flash. Plain html is what search engines like best. Besides, many users just hate waiting for fancy flash sites to load.

Step Six: Write a Press Release to Announce Your New Web Presence – Promotion Part Two

Once you have the complete website online write a relevant press release and submit it to a few online media outlets. There are online press portals where you can submit your press release for free, so don’t ignore this important step: it will bring you a few extra one way links. Having many sites pointing to your website will determine the search engines to index your site and place it higher in their results. You don’t need to submit your site to google: google will come to you, following these links.

Well, these are some basic steps that will help you cut costs. But for many entrepreneurs time means money. So if you don’t have the time to do-it-yourself, make sure you choose a reliable web development company, one that will not throw your site into the black SEO trap, one that will not make false promises such as “top ten results… guaranteed”.

Mihaela Lica, founder of the online PR, web development and SEO company Pamil Visions is an experienced journalist, with a broad online public relations knowledge. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mihaela_Lica