Archive | February, 2010

Search Engine Optimization Marketing

Search Engine Optimization can be your best friend depending on how you use it. It can also be your worst enemy if you neglect this highly important aspect of internet marketing. It is important to know what SEO is, and what marketing is. You will also need to know how to build traffic to your web-pages using SEO, and why keywords are important in this process.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is a way of manipulating search engines so that your website or web-page can attract targeted visitors. The better your website is designed for SEO the more visitors you’ll attract which will eventually translate into a huge number of sales.

What is Marketing?

The official definition of marketing is exposing and/or communicating your website to a certain amount of people so that you can make your presence and product known to the general community. Therefore, Search Engine Optimization Marketing is making your presence known to those who search Google.

How to build traffic to your website using SEO

There are many things you must do before you start attracting search engine visitors. One of the most important ways to build traffic to your website by using SEO is by keyword optimizing your webpage. This means that you will have to find keywords that are highly searched but have low competing sites. If you put these keywords throughout your whole website, you will gain a great amount of organic, targeted, search engine visitors.

Why keywords are so important?

Keywords are highly important because keywords is how Google identifies the niche or subject of your website. For example, if your website is selling “dog shampoo”, then you would want Google to recognize your website as an authority on this subject. You wouldn’t want to rank for “computer accessories”, if your website is about “dog shampoo”. Also by utilizing keywords, it will catch the eyes of search engine visitors, and you will get more visits to your page as well.

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Search Engine Optimization is an Art

Search engine optimization is an art. As search algorithms are being changed by major search engines like Yahoo or Google, SEO experts are always on their toes to catch up with the wind. Here are some useful SEO strategies used by experts. Enjoy!

1. Try to use media marketing smartly. When a small business gets exposure with visual elements, it can join some suitable communities available on Flickr. It is so easy to post hi-quality photos there. When your business is catering services, it would be smart decision to utilize Yahoo Answers for positioning yourself as a true expert within your industry.

Whatever social media website you are using, ‘DO NOT SPAM’ is the 1st rule of the game! Rather, you should try to become an active, as well as contributing member at that site. Your object here would be to merely interrelate with probable customers. So make sure you are not annoying anyone.

2. Take full advantage of your local search privileges. If you have noticed, there is a recent hype related to offline buying. So start by optimizing your site for grabbing those local traffic. To do that, you have to show your address along with your local phone number. Yet, you have to ensure that those are showed prominently.

Compose a well-detailed page that explains the directions or location of your business. It would be a great idea to use neighborhood landmarks in this page’s text. Your next task in hand would be to submit your website to those free services of local listings (offered by major search engines).

You have to ensure that your website is enlisted at local or social directories like CitySearch, Yelp, or Local.com. You need to also encourage your potential customers to write reviews regarding your business at those sites, too.

3. Try to take full advantage of all those tools provided by the search engines. Get started by signing up for Webmaster Central of Google or Site Explorer of Yahoo for learning more on how your website is being viewed by those search engines. This way, you might expect to have some idea on the number of inbound links that they are currently aware of.

4. It would be a great move to diversify the traffic sources. Here is a gross estimate on that. You can expect around 70% traffic from Google today. Yet, you have to consider the consequences if their next gigantic algorithm upgrade hits your website hard. So you got to picture your position if your website’s Google visibility vaporizes just like that.

Newsletters as well as other kind of subscriber based content might help you in holding on to your traffic or customers regardless of the actions or algorithm upgrades of major search engines. As a matter of fact, you have a large checklist of TO DOs (e.g. creating top-notch content, starting your blog, utilizing social media or local search, and much more).

All these hard work should help you in growing a potential clientele and/or a loyal band of existing customers, who might actually support you in surviving the ruthless whims of major search engines. So use your creativity too!

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Google SEO Training Course – Vital Clues From Search History

Any SEO training course claiming to cover the Google search engine that does not recognize the history of search is missing the whole point.

Let us take note of some very relevant and important part of that history. When the Google guys were trooping around trying to sell their superior search engine to leading web names at the time like Excite, Yahoo and the likes, most people did not think that search was important. They saw no value in it. And yet I remember as a user struggling on the Yahoo search engine for hours seeking some simple information.

So what made Google different was simply the fact that it made it much easier to find what you were looking for. This is a profound statement to anybody seeking a Google SEO training course. It means that all you need to do to rank highly in Google search results is offer exactly what your target market is looking for.

I know this sounds corny but it is as I have already said a profound truth. If you offer quality content, others will naturally read it, link to it and come back again and again for more information and what takes over is the viral effect and within no time your site zooms to the top of Google search results.

You see it is said that Google algorithm considers about 500 million variables in ranking sites. You can be sure each of those variables is designed to give the user a better experience. That is how Google has become such a successful company with absolutely no advertising. The juggernaut has just grown from word of mouth.

In other words you do not need any Google SEO training course. All you need to is to do exactly what the Google guys Sergey Brin and Larry Page did that caused their small start-up to grow so phenomenally.

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I Know My Business Needs to Be Online, But I Don’t Know What to Do

We are in a day and age where most business owners realize that they need to be online. Now, whether or not they are, that is the question. Then there is that strange bunch that feels the internet is a passing fad that is going to fade out and go away. I call this denial behavior the ostrich syndrome because it is like they are sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that when they pull it back out, the internet will be gone. We all know that is not going to happen, it is just going to continually evolve into something far greater than it is today, but it is always going to be here.

Because I own a web development company I have had the occasion to speak with a few people who whole heartedly told me that they believe their customers don’t use the internet, so they don’t need it for their business. As these conversations went on and I would dig a deeper into these beliefs, there was one common thread that I would find across the board. That thread was that ultimately they did know they needed to be on the internet and they did know that is where their customers shopped. But what stopped them and made them cling to denial was that they did not know what to do.

Once I would get past that initial barrier there would be questions like, how do I put up a website, how do I get a domain, what do I put on it, how do I get people to look at it, and so on. The questions were absolutely endless, needless to say that the bottom line was that they needed some help. Someone that would either take them by the hand and show them what they needed to do or even someone that would just do it for them.

My suggestion if you are one of these people that just does not know what to do, do a local search yourself to find some help. Go to Google or whatever search engine you are most comfortable with and type in “website designer” then your city and state. You can always find someone across the country or even overseas for that matter that will do it for you at a very cost effective rate. But if this is your first time and you want to understand what is going on, use the local search like I just described and find someone close to you. This way you can sit down in person and have your questions answered.

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