Search Engine Optimisation - Tips and Tricks
April 27, 2008
Inbound linkage to your site is extremely important, but it must be done correctly. What is correctly? First and foremost, avoid link exchanges and other free-for-all link reciprocation schemes — including a "links" page or "resources" page in which anybody can join. Only link to sites you personally know, and keep these to a minimum.
Search engine optimisation experts pretty much agree that there are a few important steps to improving your search engine rankings and, surprisingly, no technical knowledge is required for any of them.
Step 1: Incorporate Keywords Into Title Tag
This is the No. 1 factor in achieving high search rankings. While the incorporation of important key phrases into your title tags will not alone get your site to the top — in fact, all of the suggestions in this article should be taken as an entirety, SEO is about balance, not one magic bullet — the title tag is of the utmost importance.
What is a title tag? It is a snippet of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code that appears in the header section of an HTML document. But wait! I said no technical knowledge was required! What is this HTML code of which I speak?
Don’t worry — just tell your webmaster to change your title tags. Tell him the most important key phrases for each of your pages, and tell him to put them into a title tag. Each page should have its own unique title tag specifically optimized to the key phrase targeted on that page. In other words, it is a mistake to use the same title tag for all pages of a Web site.
The easiest way to do this is to send an e-mail to your webmaster saying, "Please change the title tags on the following pages as indicated." Then, simply make a two-column list or table — column one being page name or URL (uniform resource locator), column 2 being the corresponding title tag for that page. It will take your webmaster only a few minutes per page to make this change, and you will be much better off for it.
Step 2: Install a Blog - and Use It
Blogs are very simple yet powerful ways to drive traffic and rankings. The easiest, fastest and cheapest way to get up and going with a blog is to use Google’s free Blogger application.
This provides a number of advantages. First, it’s easy, free and simple. Perhaps more importantly, however, it is owned by Google, and the Google bots crawl all Blogger blogs regularly. For this reason, the five-minute act of setting up a blog is the best way to get a new site found and indexed by Google, usually within a matter of days. This eliminates the need for submission of your site to Google manually.
It is best to set up the blog so that it resides on your server. Again, your webmaster can easily do this for you in about three minutes — so don’t let him charge you an arm and a leg — and no technical knowledge is required on your side. Blogger can automatically publish all of your posts to your site if set up in this manner.
Once your blog is set up, start posting articles. Articles should be 400 to 600 words in length, and should not be self-promotional –in other words, the opposite of a press release. They should be general interest articles on topic related to your industry or field. How-to articles — such as this one — can be wildly popular. Product reviews are also excellent blog fodder.
Blog entries should be posted on a regular basis, at least once weekly, if not more often. Keep them short and clear — remember, we’re not going for a Pulitzer here. Just provide information that people can use.
Step 3: Increase Global Link Popularity of Your Site (It’s Easy)
Inbound linkage to your site is extremely important, but it must be done correctly. What is correctly? First and foremost, avoid link exchanges and other free-for-all link reciprocation schemes (including a "links" page or "resources" page in which anybody can join). Only link to sites you personally know, and keep these to a minimum.
If you are blogging, increasing your global link popularity is pretty easy through blog syndication and social bookmarking. We’ll talk more about that later. First, you should make your blog articles available for syndication and distribution across the Web. This is done via article syndication sites — some good ones include EzineArticles and Article Blast. These sites allow you to repost your blog articles for use and republication by third-party sites, most of whom will give you some link love as the source of the content.
The accounts on these article distribution sites (Google search: article distribution) are free to set up and easy to use. Getting the word out about your articles in this manner is a highly effective methodology for inbound link acquisition.
Step 4: Influence Anchor Text of Inbound Links to Your Site
The anchor text of inbound links is an important factor in the determination of which key phrase queries for which your site should rank. Anchor text is simply the actual words which make up the physical link to your site. The most famous example would be "Click Here."
It is doubtful that you want to rank for the phrase "Click Here." Therefore, you can influence the type of anchor text third-party sites use when linking to you. While you cannot ever maintain total control over what others do — and this is a good thing, as varying anchor text links to a site is looked upon favorably by Google — a good amount of control can be had via the inclusion of an "About the Author" section in each article you syndicate via the step 3 methods above.
At the end of each article, simply include a short — one or two sentence — About the Author attribution, that identifies you as the source of the article. In this section, include an anchor text link using important key phrases for which you want to appear.
Here’s an example: About the Author: John Doe is the owner of WidgetsRUs, a leading provider of {start anchor text link here}widgets{end link} to Fortune 500 companies. For more information, please visit [Web site URL here].
In the example above, you can see how the important key phrase "widgets" is used as the anchor text for the actual link to the author’s Web site. Google and other engines use the information in anchor text to determine for which phrases a site should rank. By including an attribution to yourself and your site, you will be able to dramatically influence the anchor text phrases third parties use when linking to you.
Step 5: Get Involved With Social Media
Social media is most simply defined as any user generated content. This can take the form of blog posts, videos, forums or any other content that is created on the Web not by the Web site owner, but rather by the users of a Web site. Famous examples include MySpace , YouTube , Facebook , Digg, LinkedIn and many others.
Depending on your target audience, social media can be utilized to both increase inbound links to your site as well as direct traffic. The aggressive pursuit of a social media campaign can take many different forms. Right now, we will discuss the simplest and most effective (in terms of bang for your buck) social media strategy. This is known as "social bookmarking."
Picture the "Favorites" folder in your browser. This is where you privately bookmark Web sites and pages that you find interesting and to which you will likely want to return. Social bookmarking is simply a way of doing this in a public manner.
Each of your blog posts should be bookmarked to the major social bookmarking sites. These sites include but are not limited to Digg.com, Furl.com, StumbleUpon.com, Technorati.com, Del.icio.us and many others.
You can set up free accounts at each of these sites. Then, simply bookmark each of your blog posts to them. This is usually done via a simple click on a button (for example "Digg this article") or by manually entering the URL of the article in question. This allows other users to encounter your bookmarked content, and gives them the option to bookmark it as well, providing a valuable opportunity for both links and viral traffic.
These sites are big on spam prevention, so be sure not to go around only bookmarking your stuff. If you are going to do this, it would be wise for you to also bookmark other related content, perhaps even competing content, so that the users of these sites don’t flag you as a spam user.
Step 6: Press Releases
Finally, press releases on a regular basis are a good way to achieve links as well as visibility in news results. A monthly press release can do a lot to solidify your rankings by creating links from authority sources as well as increasing your brand recognition and site credibility. Be sure to make the release about something newsworthy, such as the launch of a new product line, company developments and the like.
Writing press releases is not at all like writing articles - feel free to promote away! Just be sure there is some newsworthy element to it, and steer away from press releases that say nothing more than "we are the best, so choose us."
Following these six steps will undoubtedly take you far in your quest to achieve higher search rankings. Good luck!
The Power of a Business Blog
April 7, 2008
“Blogs are the most important thing to online marketing since sliced bread.” “Blogs may have their place… but it’s not in direct marketing.” With such disparate views, whom do you believe? The blog consultants? Or established “old school” marketing mavens? .
Barraged with hype, marketers can have a tough time deciding whether blogs should be part of their arsenal. Listen to the blog consultants? But who profits from the blog phenomenon? Are we talking “opportunistic agenda” or “objective perspective”?
How about the marketing experts? Is it fair to say that blogging doesn’t belong in a direct or business-to-business marketing program? Why do so many veterans bristle at the idea of blogs? Is it simply because of imagined shortcomings? Or do blogs stump an “old school” sensibility that seeks a precedent for comparison?
A decade ago, with the dawning of the commercial web, marketers faced a similar dilemma. One faction wrote the web off as negligible, while another took to the barricades, waving the web banner and proclaiming the demise of other channels. As we learned, new vehicles do not necessarily replace old ones — in fact, they may even supplement them.
“Okay,” you say, “history is well and good. But what happens in the next senior-management meeting when the CEO asks, ‘Does blogging belong in our marketing communications program?’ What do I tell him?”
First, you can tell him blogs are not an effective direct marketing tool. I doubt they ever will be. Blogging doesn’t allow you to precisely target audiences or permit any discernable control over who sees your message. However…
Blogs have already proven useful in publicity campaigns, generating word-of-mouth and, in some cases, media attention. CPG marketers have made the most effective use of commercial blogs, with highly imaginative efforts attracting throngs of consumers. There’s no question these blogs have affected consumer bonding with brands.
Blogs can also play an important role in business-to-business marketing. Management gurus, public speakers and prominent business leaders can wield some mean business-to-business blogs. Tom Peters, for one, has a very successful blog. For Peters’ fans, this is a godsend — access to Peter’s daily thought process. Of course, the more people who clamor to glean Peters’ next idea, the more likely his next seminar will sell out and his next tome will fly off the bookshelves.
Are blogs right for every company or brand? No.
Are bloggers, and especially blog consultants, over-hyping blogs? Absolutely.
The first group is merely excited about technology. The second benefits from getting businesspeople to turn off their logic and open their pocket books. The unfortunate backlash — wholesale discrediting of blogs by critics who have either never used them effectively or never used them altogether.
A brave new nirvana? Or just a passing fad? The importance of blogging shouldn’t be overstated or ignored. (Though, currently, the most interesting aspect of blogs is social, not commercial.) Blogs are unique. They aren’t direct mail, telemarketing, direct response TV, e-commerce or e-mail marketing … and that’s fine. Defining what they aren’t doesn’t diminish their potential in the hands of a smart marketer.
Search Engine Submission - Is It Necessary?
April 4, 2008
The #1 SEO scam that you need to know about is where literally thousands of unscrupulous companies will try to "trick" you into believing that you need to submit your pages to the search engines in order to get indexed and then some will even go so far as to "trick" you into believing that you need to submit your pages to the search engines every week or every month so that you can be sure to acquire high rankings, which of course, is a just scam to separate you from your money.
So don’t waste your money on these services or even buy search engine submission software. Don’t use services and/or software of this kind even if they are free as they are completely useless. When search engines first came on the scene (circa 1996) it was necessary to submit to them since there were very few Websites around and therefore they needed to know where they were all located, but since around 1998 that has not been necessary because the search engines want to know that your pages are well connected to and from important pages on the Web before they will deem them worthy of inclusion to their free databases.
All you need to do to be indexed by the search engines is to be properly linked from pages that are already in the databases of the search engines and the more links you can acquire, the more likely your pages will remain in the search engines.
If you are the impatient type and don’t want to wait for the (free-based) spiders to find your pages and index them, then you can pay for inclusion to all of the search engines (except for Google) to send out their (fee-based) spiders to index your pages.
Paid Inclusion Programs
The quote below from Google founders, Brin and Page, explain why Google will not accept payment in return for a promise to include Web pages.
After IPO, Google Founders Plan to Remain in Control
While Google derives 95 percent of its revenue from ads, Brin and Page said Google will not accept payment in return for a promise to include Web sites in online searches. (The ads appear to the right of search results.)
"Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others," the letter said. "We will live up to our ‘Don’t Be Evil’ principle by keeping user trust and not accepting payment for search results."
Yahoo Inc., which was identified as Google’s biggest competitor, says it allows companies to pay for inclusion in a search but does not guarantee they will appear in search results.
Source: WashingtonPost.com
Paid inclusion programs mean that, in exchange for a payment, a search engine will guarantee to list certain pages from your Website. These programs don’t guarantee that the pages will rank high for particular queries but just that they will be included and updated about every 48 hours. Whether your page ranks high will still depend on the search engine’s algorithm and your ability to optimize these pages.
Website Content Optimisation - Make It Work!
April 3, 2008
A search-engine-friendly Web site can generate qualified traffic through the search engines naturally. The long-term marketing cost is far lower for SEO than paying for advertising to promote a site, because over time SEO tends to give, and give, and give.
If we boil SEO down to its three fundamental elements, we’d focus on building a crawler-friendly site with great content and diversity of inbound links not only to the home page but deep into the site as well.
Content optimization is a key focus of any SEO campaign. After all, you’re constantly adding to and updating your site and blog, so there are always new opportunities to optimize site content.
Content optimization is about prominently incorporating targeted keywords and keyword phrases into the copy on each page to appeal to prospects searching for your goods and services. Doing so ensures your content has a chance to be found for all the right words. Ideally, these are highly searched terms and phrases that convert. That’s where keyword research comes into play when optimizing your site’s content.
Before you dig into keyword research to determine how well targeted your content is and what the size of your keyword market is, there are a few basic skills to add to your repertoire. Fundamental content optimization skills include:
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How to compile keyword research.
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How to measure content optimization efforts.
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Some basic copywriting knowledge.
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Basic HTML coding and basic SEO knowledge.
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A commitment to optimizing content — efforts will pay off!
Most keyword research experts use spreadsheets to collect data, rank popularity of specific terms and phrase, and easily sort keywords for use in different site areas. Of course, a more elegant desktop database is much more fun to work with. But spreadsheets will do for starters.
Your site’s metrics package is a great place to start compiling a master keyword list. You don’t want to mess with the parts that work. The goal is to earn your fair share of search engine referrals for targeted keywords and phrases.
There are myriad ranking tools available. Web CEO is probably one of the easiest and least expensive. Set-it-and-forget-it features allow you to readily monitor your rankings in the search engines for specific words and phrase over time. There are other tools available, too. No matter which you use, make certain you capture baseline data before spending time and money on keyword research and subsequent content optimization efforts.
Of course, basic writing skills are necessary for optimizing content and incorporating keyword richness into body copy in a reader-friendly manner. A little rudimentary SEO knowledge will go a long way, too. It’s important to understand the differences between on-the-page, behind-the-page, and off-the-page SEO fundamentals.
Important on-page elements include visible site navigation, page templates that influence the site’s overall structure, permanent and temporary body copy, internal anchor text links in the body copy, and each page’s heading tag hierarchy. This is where a little HTML knowledge really helps.
Understanding your CMS is a good idea, too. It makes it easier to analyze SEO elements behind that page, such as what information is used to compile each page’s title tag and meta description.
Two of the most important written elements of content optimization include the title tag and the H1 heading. All other written elements work in tandem to complement anchoring keyword themes for the site. If your title and H1 tags agree, the two will work together to send very strong contextual signals to the search engines.
Normally, users only see the title tag and meta description SEO elements used in forming the search engine snippets for your site. In most cases, your site’s indexed search results use part of the content from your site’s meta descriptions. If no unique meta description content is available, search engines may display the site navigation, which doesn’t make for a very compelling presentation to potential visitors.
Sometimes, the home page snippet in Google is defined by your site’s listing in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), a directory Google utilizes to supplement its listings. Other times, information from the Yahoo Directory may be presented in the home page snippet. The best way to control what’s displayed is to create unique meta descriptions for each page within the site. You can always use NOODP or NODIR meta tags if you want to eliminate snippets from suboptimal directory listings.
Using the type of words people search for in the title tag and meta description helps improve the click decision, which in turn will help improve your site’s overall search referral traffic.
The goal is not only to have a first-page listing in all major SERPs , but also to get people to click on that listing. For that to happen, a compelling meta description is in order. Good keywords and well-constructed sentences help present optimal search engine snippets.
Yet a good snippet doesn’t always guarantee results. It takes more effort to attain and maintain top positioning in search results. These efforts include link building, which is considered an off-the-page SEO factor.
To be found for the right words on any site, you must undergo regular, extensive keyword research to understand what words people use when they search for your goods and services.
You must also understand how many searches are taking place for targeted words and phrases to evaluate the size and competitiveness of specific keyword markets. Toward this end, we’ll discuss some common tools used for keyword research and how to get started next time.
