Important Aspects of Website Design

We believe you don’t start the design of a new or revised website by sitting down with the designer and coder of the website. Rather, we recommend you review the approaches, ideas, processes and other methods listed below to determine if they apply to your situation.

Think about your audience. Are they looking for immediate answers and solutions? We bet they are. Most likely these visitors to your website are very much like you. Chances are you use the Internet more than other types of media to search for information. If a web page doesn’t “grab your interest” within 8 - 10 seconds after landing on it… you move on!

As a “first step” we suggest that you start by reviewing the questions listed below. We are convinced that once you get to the last question… you will have a list of action items identified that will greatly improve the productivity of your current website. The success or failure of the site and/or business may very well depend upon the decisions you make after reading these questions.

What Do You Know About Your Clients and Prospects State of Mind?

When visitors land on your website, they have very little time to read what you say. They have a need for information or a product and don’t want to listen or read verbose descriptions and comments. You have about 8 seconds to engage them and get them to take action. Do most visitors land on your website wanting:

1) information,
2) a “quick fix”,
3) a bargain,
4) a large selection,
5) or a telephone call, etc.?

It is imperative to know the answers to these and many other questions BEFORE you design the pages within your website.

Do You Make Website Visitors Feel You Can Satisfy Their Wants and Needs?

Landing on any page within your website [especially the Homepage] must make the visitor know that you understand their needs, business, wants, and desires. The more you put yourself into the “mindset” of the website visitor, the better chance you have of converting their visit into something you want to happen i.e. buy, complete a contact us form, bookmark the page, pick up the phone and call you or any other method of measurable conversion.

What Approach Do You Take When Developing Pages Within Your Website?

What do you think you would want from your website if you were the prospective visitor or client? Assume you don’t know as much information as you want in order to make an informed decision. Talk to these visitors in a language they will understand. If visitors want more insight or information, tell them to click on the more info link or give you a call. They will follow your direction ONLY if you have built some level of trust or understanding.

What are You “Selling” to the Website Visitor?

Are you focused on telling them about your product or service or are you making them understand that choosing your firm will deliver that special feeling they are seeking by making the purchase? Are you sure that you made the visitor know that you understand their needs, wants, problems, etc.? What techniques did you implement to get your points across?

How are You Going to Get the Visitor to Stop and Think About Your Service or Product?

Remember… they are ready to pass by your website in a blink of an eye. What are you going to do to engage them? The answer you come up with will be critical to the success you have in gaining their confidence enough to buy or call you. Make sure what you say is NOT the same old thing they are used to seeing or reading on other websites. Be boring and you lose! Address the issues that appeal to the visitor and they WILL STOP! This is hard work… but worth the effort.

What Kind of “Call to Action” Statements are You Placing on Your Website?

Turning a visitor into a prospect or client is one of the most critical actions of your website. How will you engage them? Once they know that you understand their needs and wants, they are more inclined to follow your CTA direction. Call to Action statements are critical to the success of any website’s conversion. Guide them in a manner that is more telling, rather than selling. Don’t be afraid to be assertive.

How Does Your Website Address the “Who Are We” Issue?

Again, it is about making the website visitor feel confident that they are choosing a reputable firm or organization with which to do business. They need to read about your success. This can be done by exhibiting your affiliation with associations, awards won, satisfied client statements, client success stories, examples of your work, etc. Show them you are a “player” in your industry.

Are You Prepared to Answer: “What Makes You Different”?

What have clients and prospects said about you and your company? Have they applauded you for your approach to doing business? Did they say you made them feel like you understood their needs and wants? Think back to the reasons clients buy from you. How did you meet their needs and wants? Give your prospective clients reasons to do business with your firm.

A final thought…

Make it your primary goal to understand the potential client. Look at your website through that client’s perspective. Who are they? What makes them different? What do they individually want and need? Be informative… do more telling than selling. They will “get it” and appreciate that you have made them an educated buyer. Finally, tell them what you want them to do next. Get them to take the first step and be ready to deliver on the expectations you have set throughout your website!

Finally, be sure to hire Internet marketing professionals to do the job if you don’t have the capabilities in-house. Too much is at stake to leave this part of your business to chance! We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein.

About The Author
We have 11 years of Internet marketing experience re building successful website promotíon programs and meeting the challenges of appealing to today’s Internet visitor in the current economic environment. Call us at 631-423-0815 for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team or to review the Full list of PDF documents on Internet Marketing and Conversion techniques. InternetConsultingAndCoaching.com

Keyword basics for website success

Successful sports teams have engrained in their heads the fundamentals of their sports. Business leaders and coaches alike who dwell on the fundamentals usually have the most successful outcomes. Failure is almost always rooted in a deviation from the fundamentals. So if your website is not delivering clients, perhaps you’re missing the fundamentals.

Part of the answer is no one actually taught you the fundamentals of website success. Most businesses understand the need for a website, few understand the fundamentals. Getting your website to deliver clients is an exercise in fundamentals. First and foremost is a back to basics, grass roots understandng of your market, website style.

Keyword research is the first thing every website owner should have done but most didn’t. With respect to your online business, keyword research equals market research. The coolest thing about being online is that you can absolutely KNOW your market, understand their interests and create an online business and marketing plan relative to your market and their needs.

There are probably hundreds of keyword research tools online that can help you do research. Our advice is to seek out an expert. Getting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is quite a different thing.

Relative to keyword research, here’s what we can find via search engine tools: keywords and keyword phrases, search volumes, total web pages using those keywords, web pages optimized for those keywords, keywords in hypertext (called anchor text) linking to other sites and pages. We can even look at any specific website and determine what keywords they are at least trying to rank for. And of course, type the keyword phrase into a search box will list the top ten sites ranking for that term. The result of such a search is referred to as the SERPS or the Search Engine Results Pages.

The best keywords to use are ones that will generate reasonable traffic AND have very little competition. One of the parameters we seek in our keyword research is to determine the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. Google will tell us how many web pages are indexed for the search term. Just run a search and notice in the upper right of the results that Google will tell you how many pages are indexed with your search keywords. Without getting too technical here, Google and the other major search engines will also tell you how many web pages use those keywords in the page title, an indication that those pages specifically cover the topic of your search. Having keywords in the page title is one of the key ways to optimize a webpage for the keyword. Knowing how many pages are doing this gives you a better idea of how many pages are intentionally using the keywords you’re researching.

KEYWORD STRATEGY
The first thing that has to go is the ego of the site and/or business owner. Unless you show up in the first page of the search engine results, you’re NOBODY! Worse, you can’t push your way through the crowd to get to the top of the SERPS. You can get there by Google sponsored ads - Adwords guarantee your visibility on the SERPS. But still the point is, you’ll pay.

Let’s consider three strategies for beating your competition relative to the search engine results.

DIRECT STRATEGY
Choose the same keywords that your competition is ranking for and go head to head. If they are doing pay-per-click, you do it too. In this scenario, you’ll end up spending a lot of money to achieve and maintain top SERPS positions. If your competition is ranking on good, high traffic terms, plan on spending time, money and resources to get to the same position it may have taken them years to achieve. A direct strategy can get bloody. Ultimately, it is the most obvious choice, the least creative and the stupidest.

INDIRECT STRATEGY
Choose keywords that your competitors didn’t even think of! An indirect strategy is often associated with cross marketing and selling through an indirect channel. If you sell a service or product that your competitors don’t have, you channel your efforts through that market knowing there’s some pull-through relative to your other products and services. Very often you could be sucking business right out from under your competition’ s nose and they don’t even see it!

DIVISIONAL STRATEGY
Find out what keywords your competition is NOT ranking for in the same keyword set and go after them. The divisional strategy is the primary marketing method of niche marketers. Most business owners will equate the word “niche” with the word “small”. On the web, niche site owners are millionaires! Get rid of your pre-conceptions. The web is huge.

We use a two step process for choosing keywords. First, you have to take your direct competition into account. The second part is to look specifically at the search engine optimization parameters to determine which keywords make sense for you to specifically go after.

The leverage a website carries is in part determined by its page rank. Page rank is in large part determined by how many other sites on the web link to yours. Your exposure in the SERPS is in turn affected by your page rank. The reason you need to know this is if the top ten websites all out rank you in terms of page rank, you’re better off choosing another keyword.

Fundamental lesson: Small Fish eat smaller fish to grow bigger.

About The Author
Keyword research is one of the fundamental strategies taught to clients of www.buildawebshop.com . BuildaWebShop.com offers the lowest cost, easiest ecommerce package available.

New to Article Marketing? Do you still need keyword research?

If you’ve done any amount of research on the topic of article marketing, no doubt you’ve run into all sorts of strategies and advice on how to write for search engines and how to make effective titles and resource boxes using your keywords.

For newbies it’s very common to feel like you have a lot of learning to do or that you may be over your head technically–please be assured that this is not the case!

Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by all of the technical aspects of this very effective marketing strategy. Article marketing is very “beginner friendly” and you don’t need to have any sort of SEO knowledge at all in order to do it effectively.

What about those “keywords” that you keep hearing everyone talking about?

If you feel up to it, then go ahead and dive in–do your keyword research and then learn some responsible and effective ways of using your keywords in your articles, titles, and resource box.

But, if you’re like many folks who don’t feel up to learning about keywords yet, it is perfectly fine to do article marketing without doing keyword research.

By far, the determining factor for success with article marketing is not SEO or technical knowledge–it’s simply submitting articles on a consistent basis.

Here’s how to get started:

1) Set an article submission goal for your self–I’d recommend submitting several articles a month. I submit 8 a month and get great results. You can submit less than 8 and still see benefits, so if you’re not up to 8 articles right now, start off with 4 articles and have the goal of working up to 8.

2) Write articles on the topic of your website. This is very important–your articles should be on the same topic as your website. This helps Google associate your topic with your website, and will help your search engine rankings. It will also help you receive targeted traffic from your articles.

3) Submit articles consistently, every month as an ongoing part of your marketing plan. Consistency is the key to success with article marketing–you cannot expect to see drastic results by submitting in a hit or miss fashion. You don’t need to have advanced technical knowledge, but you do need to set goals and stick to them.

And that’s it, as simple as 1-2-3! You can do this!

No matter what your background, you can write articles on the topic of your niche every month, month in and month out, and see excellent results with article marketing.

Feel free to read about more advanced strategies having to do with keywords, and store the info away for a day when you’re feeling like taking on a bit more. Right now though, as you’re starting out your job is to develop the habit of writing and submitting articles.

You don’t need any SEO knowledge to get started; you will progress in your knowledge at your own pace. In fact, is it is often the person who is not technically advanced who excels with article marketing–seriously, by just submitting articles on the same topic of your website consistently, you can make a dramatic impact on your website.
Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert, and founder of the popular article distribution service, http://www.submityourarticle.com, used by thousands of business owners. Discover how to use the power of article marketing to reach tens of thousands of potential prospects for your website - download a powerful free report on successful article marketing from http://www.submityourarticle.com/report

Creating a good landing page

Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers.

While a great looking website can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services.

Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Wikipedia’s definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here are 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page:

- Relevant Content

A landing page’s content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don’t get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave.

- Multiple Landing Pages

A landing page shouldn’t necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traffíc and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on a specific offering and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on a specific proposition and your conversion rate will be higher.

- Focus on Functionality

More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a site by its design. To satisfy this, many website owners concentrate on the design aspect instead of focusing on its functionality. A well-designed landing page is essentially worthless if the prospect can’t accomplish anything. While I wouldn’t suggest skimping on the design, it shouldn’t be your priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page with that in mind.

- Call To Action

You got visitors to your landing page, now direct them to take action. Make it clear and highly noticeable without overwhelming your audience. Whether it’s a sign-up form or a “buy now” button, make it the focus of your page.

- Send a Clear Message

Keep your landing page clean and clutter free so your visitors stay focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest reasons that they should carry out the applicable call to action with larger text, contrasting colors, images. Make it easier for them to scan the content by using lists and getting right to the point.

- Provide Incentive

Bribing your visitors with freebies and samples is a proven method of enticing them to sign up. Provide more than your competition but don’t sell yourself short either. Provide a list of reasons why your offering is better and what exactly the visitor can expect. Provide references and testimonials.

- Make Visitors Stay

Avoid sending your visitors to another page unless it is absolutely necessary. That includes any internal navigation as well as external banners. If you eliminate all distractions and limit navigation options, you stand a better chance of keeping your visitors around.

- Simple is Better

Make it easy for your visitors to complete the action you want them to. Less confusion and decision making for your visitor means better conversions rate for your landing page. Don’t provide multiple choices and throw in optional extras. Focus on the pitch the page was created for.

- Power of Freebies

Everyone likes free offers. They are hard to resist and can be a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is receíved as a result of carrying out a call to action, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If your competition charges for something and you provide it for free, you’ll win the customer. Remember, just because you make a free offer doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be quality.

- Testing

I’ve stressed how important testing is in finding out what your visitors like. Testing various text, call to action forms, layouts will give you a true idea what produces the best results as far as conversion.

Using a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate, and tons of other useful metrics found in most modern day web analytics apps. Using these metrics you can easily figure out which version will be your optimal page, one that maximizes the results.

Creating a successful and effective landing page takes a lot of work but should be the focus for anyone involved with a website. Whether you are a website owner, web designer, web developer or a web marketing specialist you must be aware of the components that comprise a solid landing page. After all this can mean a website’s success or failure.

About The Author
Joanna Colek is the owner of Joanna Ciolek Web Design Studio, based in North Denver, Colorado. She offers affordable, custom and effective web design services to small business owners.

How to optimize your website

Website Optimization is a complex issue, but it must be known to any employer wishing to succeed online.

According to the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, optimizing is to find the best way to carry out an activity. Therefore, optimization of your website would make it comply best with each of its functions.

Recall that if a site is intended only for success in the Search Engines, better known as search engines will not be successful with users and the machines do not buy, not sell it. If, however, is intended only for individuals, difficult to achieve a good positioning in search engines and users do not find, therefore, not sell. In conclusion, a successful web site must comply with its duties unfailingly related to Search Engines such as those related to usability from site visitors.

We have said that anyone wishing to succeed in the Internet market, you should make a website that is a true “virtual branch.” Ie, it must be an extension of your company and function as a local online. For this, the site must achieve the objectives for which it was created, it must be compatible with the principles and policies of the Company, be functional and actually convey useful information to its users.

To specify a site that complies with the characteristics listed above, you must be using a Web Optimizer know how the site should work and how to achieve it.
While we know what we need, we do not know how. The optimization process is not fully structured, but could result in the following steps:

1) Analysis of the competition.

A competitive analysis will help us to know what strategies people are using “quarrel” with our company to win the segment. Through this research we can understand their keywords, their advantages and weaknesses. This copy does not mean that all its attributes, but watching you learn. Learn about our competitors will be very useful to know where we can fight and how we should improve.

2) Survey of Keywords.

Through a detailed study we can know the keywords in place and mostly used by the audience that his company will target. Getting on keywords is a vital step for the success of its “virtual office” as they carried their visitors from search engines or search engines to your website.

3) Development of a database for the site.

We must improve the site pages, and starting from scratch, create them. This step optimizes both HTML coding (headings, metatags, etc..) And “site architecture” (internal structure of links to Web pages that compose your site) as the graphical interface of the website (content and design). Recall that a site that has a great design but not the content it offers its visitors need is a sterile site.

4) Incorporation of keywords.

Once you choose the most effective keywords, we must place on our website. These should appear in the most important pages (Home Page and Services page) and in the measure. A repetition of the excessive lead in some Search Engines to erase from their site.

5) Review and building links.

Acquire high-quality links pointing to your website generates 95% success to get high rankings in Search Engines. Although rated to increase in the search engines is also important to have a large number of links pointing to your pages, we see that the truly important is the quality and degree of the same relationship with your site.

6) Measure the results.

Through various methods you can tell if your site traffic has increased after the optimization. Also, obviously if you will notice the presence on the Internet is giving better results in terms of sales since the Optimizer “he threw hand” to your website. If properly complied with their professional work, you will notice the good results.

7) Maintenance of the site and its contents.

Remember that the last step is the longest and perhaps most important. Once your website is ready and positioned in the search engines to be maintained. If not fed by updated and interesting content for its users and does not make the necessary changes so that they like, the previous optimization has been a waste of time and money.

www.SEOLatestNews.com

PODcasting as a Marketing Tool

Here is another fantastic way to get your name “out-there” and get people visiting your website.

PodCasting!

Podcasting is Audio (and/or Video) that you create on your computer (or via other means, and then load into your computer) that you then share and allow other people to listen and/or view.

There are large numbers of Podcasting sites that allow you to upload your audio or video presentation, and then attach a description and information about the presentation. Once this is done, people who visit these podcast sites can “find” your podcast and hopefully if it is interesting enough to them, they will subscribe to your “feed” (similar to a mailing list, but for audio/video) and then be automatically notified whenever you release a new audio or video.

Now generally the “feed” is not controlled by you (unlike a regular mailing list) but rather is controlled by the podcast directory and a podcast “reader” which is software (often free) that you can use to automatically check whether new content is available for your selected “feeds” and to then get downloaded automatically.

You can then watch or listen to the downloaded presentation at your leisure, copy to your iPod, etc. It’s really quite cool.

One of the biggest names in PodCasting is iTunes. No doubt you’ve heard of iTunes and maybe wonder what it is. iTunes is software that is supplied by Apple (the Mac people) that you can download for free and it will manage all your podcast “feeds” as well as your music and video collection on your computer, and even allow you to buy music (and podcasts) via it’s iTunes store.

Apple have versions of iTunes for both Windows and Mac and it is completely free to download.

Now iTunes is big business, ten of thousands of people download from it every day, so this is probably the first site you should try and get your podcast listed on.

Many people claim to be experts in the area of targeted website traffic. We suggest you do some careful research yourself first before jumping in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, first things first, lets discuss what you could be putting into the audio / video.

If your like me, and have a great face for radio, don’t despair. You don’t necessarily need to produce video content, audio is perfectly acceptable for many subscribers, as it’s something you can do (listen to) anywhere (although with video iPods available these days this is also true for Video).

First and foremost you presentation should be adding value to your listeners/viewers. A hard sell sales presentation won’t be worth much to listeners/viewers (at least probably not to those who’s first experience of you is via the audio/video), rather it should be quality relevant content that will appeal to listeners with an interest in your niche market.

Bear in mind that it’s highly likely that when you upload a presentation for inclusion in iTunes, it will be reviewed manually by a human, and if it’s just a hyped up call to action to buy something chances are they may not approve it for inclusion. And even if they did approve it, listeners are going to be turned off when they hear it especially if you have not previously built up a relationship with them.

I suggest an interview is a great idea for a podcast. Put together a set of questions and answers to common problems that you “solve” on your website, and have some one interview you. Save the audio and upload to iTunes!

Another idea (once you get a few podcasts completed) is an overview of your product or services, but again not a hard sell, but a detailed list of what you can do or case studies on how you have helped other customers previously.

Just remember it needs to be interesting to listen to, so make sure you target it to your customers needs and to be solving problems that your potential customers may be facing.

You may find iTunes will want a series of podcasts before adding you to their directory, so it would be a good idea to do 2 or 3 podcasts if possible and then submit them to be included as a group.

If you plan to host your podcasts yourself, be very careful and consider if you have another bandwidth to do so, particularly if your feeds get picked up by lots of people.

Because of the nature of podcasts (audio or video) the files can end up being huge, so It’s very important that you plan this out in advance as you may find once you get successful and have a reasonable number of people listening to your podcasts, that you will be putting your server in meltdown and be running out of quota. This may mean your ISP closes down your website!

Don’t be victim to this, plan for growth on day 1, and assume you are going to be a success and put the right steps in place so you have sufficient bandwidth when things do take off.

Either put all your efforts into getting listed in iTunes or other large Podcast sites, or if your going to do it yourself, invest in a reasonable PodCast hosting company who specializes in Podcasts.

A decent alternative to iTunes for hosting your iTunes (especially if your have trouble getting iTunes to actually accept your podcasts is a company called Liberated Syndication. I would suggest you check their website out, they are one of the best out there, and give great value for money and in some cases it’s free.

Remember all podcasters had to start somewhere, and some of the bigger ones actually have paid advertising now (where sponsors pay the podcaster for an advertisement to be placed in the podcast). This could end up to be a really nice little money earner for you as well as provide great value for your listeners.

For more information on website promotion, please visit Anthony & Tim Buchalka today. Their detailed and helpful information and free traffic courses will help you begin dramatically building your web traffic.

Top 10 SEO Questions

Owning any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. However, everyone and their brother has advice on how to do it. All this ‘expert’ advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing. Here are some straightforward answers to the most common SEO questions.

1. What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.

The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.

2. How important is SEO?

Let’s just put it this way. What’s better a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?

With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.

3. What are text links?

Links are just one of the tools you can use to increase your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.

An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.

4. What are link farms and link exchanges?

Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.

5. What is duplicate content?

The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.

6. How do I find the right keywords?

There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.

The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.

7. How do I optimize my web pages?

Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.

Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.

Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about.

If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this: <TITLE>Search Engine Optimization Tips</TITLE>

Keep your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to increase the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.

Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines however it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this: <META NAME=”description”

8. Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

The simple answer is - no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed on a directory, like the DMOZ Open directory project, then you will need to submit to those.

9. What are spiders?

Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bot. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.

10. How does content help my SEO?

Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and increase traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:

• Blogs

• Forums and chat rooms

• Articles

• Reviews

• Case studies

• Reports

• How to guides

• Tutorials

• e-books and much more.

Optimize Your Website with These Simple Tips - Think Links

As more and more marketing functions move to the web, businesses are at least starting to understand the requirements of ranking for keywords relevant to the business. Most however still don’t understand how Google and other search engines determine who gets top placements. The guidelines here will at least put you in position to achieve higher search engine ranks.

For businesses that want to wade into this arena, here are some guidelines that might save you the cost associated with website optimization. Bear in mind that there’s no free ride here. Expect to put some time in this effort if you really want to see results.

Consider this a short lesson in “on-page” SEO, things that you can do to your website to improve search engine visibility. This list should be applied to EACH PAGE of your site. (You should measure your results by tracking site rank and monitor your traffic with Google Analytics).

For all pages on your website, you should:

1. Pick a primary keyword phrase that you want the page to rank for (a keyword phrase can be one or more words).

2. Pick a couple of secondary keyword phrases related to the main keyword phrase.

3. Put the primary keyword phrase at the beginning of the list of keywords in your metatags.

4. Include the secondary keyword phrases also in the keyword metatag list.

5. Use the primary keyword phrase in the description metatag. (try to also include the secondary keywords in the description)

Don’t load in keyword phrases that you won’t be discussing on the page in either the keyword or description metatags. (It doesn’t help).

6. Put the primary keyword phrase in the url (if you can). Use underscores to separate words.

7. Put the primary keyword phrase in the Title of the page (this is a biggie!)

8. Use the primary keyword between H1 Header tags in the content area.

9. I usually recommend the content follow a five paragraph essay broken up with graphics etc. Open the page introducing the main keyword phrase and mention the secondary keywords in context (1st paragraph). Each paragraph after this should discuss a secondary keyword and relate it back to the primary keyword. You can highlight sub-paragraphs with H2 or H3 Header tags using the secondary keyword terms to make them stand out. The closing paragraph summarizes the importance of the primary keyword as it relates to secondary keywords (again using those terms in context).

10. Put keywords in alt-text of the images. Use images to break up the text and enhance the content. Keep the images relevant.

Note: Secondary keywords could become primary keywords for sub-pages. In that way, your site is a never-ending work in progress.

NEXT STEP: When you’ve shored up the content of your site, you should then take a look at your internal linking. Use keyword loaded hyperlinks. For example, if you have an inner page about wedding flowers and find occasion to call attention to that page, hyperlink the words “wedding flowers” to that page. The point being: the words that you use in the hyperlink define what Google thinks the target page is about. Same goes for your home page. Instead of “Home”, you should link “Keyword Phrase” (whatever that keyword phrase is) to the home page. One way to do this: Imagine creating an index to your site that enumerates the keywords that you want to rank for and links those keywords to appropriate pages within the site (for example). You can get creative but again keep your link text focused on the keywords that you want to show up for in the search engines. Include a “mini” index of keyword links on a page linking the reader to related pages of content. You can see that this will make it easier for the site visitor to find related information AND it will also send the search engine spiders in a frenzy (in a good way).

Need a mantra? THINK LINKS!

NEXT STEP: That pretty much covers all you can do for your site. Next, pay attention to the in-bound links you have coming to your site. The same rule above applies to those links as well. So first, approach your existing link partners whom you already have inbound links with and ask to redefine the links that they have. You should provide the code to them if they don’t know how to do it. Use keyword defined hyperlinks instead of just linking the URL. If you redefined all the links that you had TO your site with your primary keyword phrase instead of your URL, you very likely will see a significant bump in your rank relative to that keyword phrase.

I think once you get this far, you should be seeing significant improvements in your rank. The key to SEO beyond this is finding ways to generate inbound links of this nature.

THINK LINKS!

About The Author
Greg Newell is an Internet Marketing specialist located in Hamilton Ohio. He leverages his WSI franchise to deliver outstanding results to customers in Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. Call if you have SEO Ohio website requirements. http://www.wsiNetReturns.com .

Use Keywords in Page Titles

It is recommended to use keywords in page titles itself. This title tag is different from a Meta tag, but it’s worth considering it in relation to them. Whatever text one places in the title tag (between the <title> and </title> portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as for example Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or OPERA.

The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages and not just a single Home Page, you must bear in mind that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.

The unique combination of these words and phrases and content will draw customers using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.

The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth book marking.

So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.

Dedicating first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like ‘and’, ‘at’ and the like is crucial in search engine optimization.

6 Tips To Harness The Power Of Blogging To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) does not need to cost you anything. If you have time and patience, you can optimize your web site for search engines at minimal cost. This article outlines some of the key SEO ways you can use that do not cost you anything.

1. Write and submit a lot of articles. Articles are very powerful in building links to your website. All the articles you write are saved and archived in article directories, creating many links to your website. The more articles you write the better because as your articles are published by other websites, your website URL in the author’s box will be on many websites. Writing articles need not cost you anything since you can write your own articles and then submit them to many article directories.
2. Create a web page on your website where you post your own articles. If you add new content on your website regularly, search engines will index your website, and your website ranking on these search engines will also increase. Make sure that you use your keywords and phrases in your web content as well as your articles.
3. Have your own blog and blog regularly using your keywords and phrases. You can simply sign up for own blog and start to blog right way. Have a link to your website on your blog. Blogging and adding fresh content will make search engines crawl your blog. This process does not cost you anything. All you need is time to blog.
4. Have a link building strategy that will help you build many links to other related websites. This does not cost you anything. All you need to do is to contact webmasters you want to exchange links with. You can create one way links by articles submissions and forum participation among others.
5. Be patient and follow these SEO steps consistently. Your website will not rank high on search engines overnight. You will need to consistently work hard at writing articles, blogging and exchanging links so that you can see an increase in your website popularity rank. Patience is the most important trait you will need if you want to succeed in SEO for your website.

Follow these tips and increase your website popularity and rank on search engines. The easier your website is to find on search engines, the more traffic you get.

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