Sunday, April 30, 2006

Content Or Links: Both Are Equally Important in SEO

There has been a debate going on for quite some time in the search engine experts' circle related to relative importance of links and content in search engine optimization. But, to be honest, this debate is useless and has no meaning because both content and links are equally important for best results in search engines. Can you choose one and say that mother is more important than father in the family? Or can you cook food without gas and stove? Similarly in SEO too, fresh and relevant content as well as good links play an equally important role.

No doubt in certain situations and circumstances, mother takes precedence over father and vise-a versa, but in the complete and total upbringing of a child, both play an equally important role. Similarly, there may be many instances and types of websites where content alone can help acquire high search engine rankings, like in the case of not very highly competitive keyword searches. But in case of highly competitive keyword searches, only content rich website wouldn't suffice.

One must understand the simple fact that the search engine algorithms (a mathematical formula) consider both content and relevant links as important for higher rankings in the search engines. Let's take it this way that if mother and father work in harmony with each other, their child will definitely be brought up in a very good and condusive environment, thus learning much more and shaping out to be a good human being than being brought up by a single parent.

http://www.segnant.com/

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Organic SEO vs. Inorganic (PPC) Advertising

Leading search engines are looked upon as the source of an extended mission for successful marketing of any business. When you buy visitors or "clicks" from a search engine, it is dubbed as "pay-per-click" (PPC) search engine advertising. Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising has an advantage that it quickly gets you to the top search engine placement by "bidding" (paying) for keywords that coordinate with your product or service. But it is accomplished only when people click at them. In fact a major of the users prefer organic search results. Due to the reduced advertising costs of Organic SEO and assured long term growth in site visitors the “Organic SEO” has become the nucleus of all the aspects that can be done to optimize a website. Its special focus on long-term profits and a methodological approach from content developing to guiding on site architecture and helping to search relevant directories has made them so effective that webmasters prefer 5th ranking to 1st ranking in Paid Search Engine advertising. Organic SEO also increases "link popularity" to make a website appear higher in search engine results by acquiring or paying for links that point to your web site giving you high rankings for your chosen search terms. Organic SEO methods are more likely to have what webmasters look for. But here the no-win situation is that you may have to wait a couple of months to get recognized.

PPC does have its place in online marketing where an advertiser according to his budget and the amount of traffic can choose to have their ads listed higher or lower for a keyword. Also advertiser is obligated to pay only when someone actually visits their site. But if organically you have a good listing and good ranking, you spend considerably less money on PPC. PPC is an effective way to drive traffic to your site quickly and form an excellent option for advertisers who are ready to spend good amount to get higher page rank immediately. Companies that sell high dollar items or have large profit margins normally get a place in the sponsored listings. It is highly effective for short-term promotions
A successful PPC campaign consumes a lot of money, but is quick to implement where you can usually achieve results in 2-3 weeks. A successful PPC campaign is all about screening and keeping a track of leads where you need long-term budgets for enduring results. As long as you maintain the program, the costs of marketing campaign can increase over time. PPC also has an advantage of knowing whether the keywords you are targeting are right for you. Knowing your targeted keywords can help you create pages for the organic search.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Website Promotion Myths

Promoting a website is a time consuming effort that involves waiting for several weeks or even months to get into high ranking directories and search engines. But promoting a website is a lot easier if you know what works and what doesn't before hand. You've submitted your site to all the major search engines and directories or perhaps, you also have paid someone to submit it for you. But there are some myths associated to website promotion that you deeply need to ponder over.

(1) Promoting website is easy, just create it, submit, sit back and relax
Many webmasters assume that a fine number of people visiting their site equalize the traffic that have the potential to make your site uniformly advantageous. Remember out of sight is always out of mind. Promoting a website calls for registering prominently at the first place and aiming for top ranking. The higher your goals, the more efforts you will put in to reach there. Aiming for anything less will lessen your chances of being found.

(2) A perception that SEO and website promotion is layman’s job and anybody can do it
Attempting to promote your site on your own can be catastrophic and sabotage your rankings. If not carried out properly, it really frustrates. The complete entire website promotion campaign is composed of several strategies that must blend together in a synchronized way in order to work accurately. Three important strategies of website promotion are
· Keyword research
· Copywriting
· SEO Marketing

You can be a good businessman online, but not necessarily an SEO specialist. Playing with these three decisive factors of any website promotion strategy won’t land you anywhere. Also, devising effective techniques for each of these is not everybody’s job. One aspect goes wrong and the whole process gets retarded.

(3) Appearances are honest
In website promotion services, looks are deceptive. What makes the site a success is the Content. Consider pushing up a site with dynamic graphics and flash without any content in it. Here you stand zero chances of selling anything. On the contrary, if you put up a site with an effective sales-pulling copy and rich content, you will secure your business. But yes, it does not mean completely overruling the visual appeal. A fine balance must be struck between visual appeal and successful copy.

(4) Submitting your URL to as many Search Engines as you can
Submitting your URL to as many Search Engines as you can is actually an inviting way to get penalized from search engines. Penalty in the form of getting blacklisted or getting banned. Here all you do is just violate the rules of search engines. Beware of the companies that allure you to blast your site to thousands of search engines.

(5) Website promotion is a quick process and capitulate immediate results
It’s true that some of the features of website promotion are comparatively quick, but the processes that help a webmaster to maintain credibility are time consuming practices. Researching, developing, testing and implementing the strategies are important tools in building trust and credibility. Traffic and results are always subjected to the quality of the website promotion program.

Hottest website promotion campaigning ideas

Things on the internet always undergo considerable changes. The way Google dances to ensure that a deserving website is listed when someone types in key terms in a search engine (Yahoo, Google etc.) has been a matter of consideration for webmasters and SEO professionals. Undoubtedly there are several sources that can work out for you but programs that are based on sound Search Engine Marketing principles are an effective way of promoting your website. Developing and implementing plans that make it easier for potential customers to find their way to your site can be made simpler by creating a user-friendly ambiance, and writing content that is significant to your target market. However, if you're planning to target specific individuals online there are certain do’s and don’ts to be followed that are currently buzzing in the market online.

Do
(1) You probably know the importance of good linking campaign and quality "inbound links". Quality inbound links generate traffic for your website and improves your search engine ranking. The number and quality of your inbound links are highly decisive in determining how your website will be ranked by the search engines.
(2) Gradually try to increase the number of backward links you have pointing to your website.
(3) Offer something of value for free on your site to webmasters in return for a link.
(4) Ask friends/family to link to you from their websites.
(5) Attract the right kind of traffic by obtaining links from within the same industry/market as your own.
(6) Write blogs.
(7) Write and distribute articles. Also submit them to article directories. Writing and submitting articles on a regular basis does a great deal for promoting your Websites.
(8) Subscribe to several newspapers as well as several news magazines to find more ideas for articles.
(9) Submit the articles to popular newsletters and newsletter directories.
(12) Add your website domain along with your contact info on all of your business cards, sales letter, adverts, documentation and e-mails.
(13) Offer the visitors to sign up to your monthly newsletter.
(14) Offer the visitors a free e-book or your documentation.
(15) Write press releases
(16) Make the best use of news groups, forums, e-catalogs and e-books, banner/exchange advertising, and co-branded relationships.
(17) Be ethical.

Do not:
(1) In whatever manner, do not get tempted to join a link building website that assures you to automate your linking requirements.
(2) Increase the number of backward links promptly.
(3) Get tempted to buy too many link text ads.
(4) Leave your site on the mercy of search engines. Do not ever think that search engines will themselves crawl your website and promote it to higher rankings.
(5) Employ hidden coding.

The Google Dance

Google Dance is a phrase used when Google updates its index. On an average it is a monthly feature that significantly causes a lot of movement in rankings. Prior to that, significant changes all together in search result used to create panic among the webmasters. However, starting from mid-2003 Google made it a regular feature. But, because of the continuous update, the effects on search results seem to have become quite insignificant. As each index update takes several days to become fully effective, meanwhile the search results seem to ‘dance’ between the old index and new index. This dance is dubbed as the “Google Dance.” Its effects are predominantly dreaded by those who follow unethical means and black-hat SEO tactics.

During an update Google draws its search results from ten thousand servers. But here the database is surplus so they can’t be updated in synchronization. This being the reason Google updates each server with the new index, one at a time. These updates at times become complicated, particularly when two major sites located on separate servers happen to have a close linking bond. This kind of incongruity contributes a great deal of change in page ranks. But eventually once everything gets settled, Google places your site in proper place. Google’s index is in fact a big, disorganized database of information that Google searches very quickly. At the same time it allows a site to remain accessible through other sites that are linked to it when the index is taking place. Usually, Google during its update do not let any site suffer for too long, but if you generating your traffic solely from Google, you will see a slight drop for a short period of time. This drop is often followed by an abrupt increase in your rankings if your page rank has increased since the last index.

The 10,000 servers that Google uses are distributed between seven datacenters all over the world. Per chance, if a part of Google crashes down, the users can still use the services of search engine. Each data center has its own individual IP address (If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned). These IP addresses are managed by the Domain Name System (DNS). Google’s IP address can change every five minutes. This assessment of time allows the datacenters to toggle between their datacenters regularly to spread the search load. This way, Google queries are directed to different data centers by changing DNS records.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Knowing why blogs rank high in search engines

Blogs have superb ranking abilities that make them a planned business communication tool. As they are often crawled and updated with news, either through new added articles or due to automated RSS Feeds they rank high in search engines. Keeping in view its potential it has been exploited by webmasters for SEO purposes. With a gradual increase in readership ratings, blogs have become a standard for Internet users. Google gives a considerable weightage to the quality of links also known as link popularity. Relatively Yahoo and MSN are less rigid and give content more weight. The links are important, though the key to success doesn’t lie in links alone. If you want traffic through search engines and blogs you must know what makes blogs rank high in search engines.

Factors why blogs rank high in search engines
(1) In a blog, your style of writing is colloquial where you discuss, negotiate, and engage in conversations. The things you say are easy to understand but your main aim is to feed the search engines database with significant keywords/key phrases. Here the keywords are relevant because most of the words are ordinary daily conversational words that we normally use. The same ordinary words form the basis of the blog, because here your aim is not to write web promotional articles. Here you talk with the target audience instead of sending formal messages.

(2) Being straight to the point adds an extra dimension to the relevancy of blog. Moreover, blogs facilitates us to be pretty informal and speak like real, living people. You will find many corporate blogs that are rhetoric and straight to the point.

(3) The page structure of every blog is standardized with the use of post's title/headline as the page's title. This standardization serves the dual purpose; html title filled with sumptuous keywords help search engines to find the best clue to what your page is about and also attracts the target audiences’ attention.

(4) Most blog posts are rather short, and they're often about one subject. One subject per post has the flexibility of integrating important keywords with keyword density in mind. If you compare a high density keyword blog to a normal corporate web site where you try to tell about all your products on one page, or very few pages, you will yourself understand the superb ranking abilities generated by blogs.

(5) The blog site's information structure is uncomplicated, which makes them easy to crawl. They have current posts and archive. That's it.


www.segnant.com

Google’s BigDaddy Update

Google’s updates are blessing for many online businesses and an unlucky omen for the insignificant sites that continuously strive to be the best. Every few months Google overhauls its algorithm to rank websites fairly in its index. Some of these updates are more significant than others and can be extremely significant to many online businesses. Last October, Google introduced Jagger update. Before that it had Austin in 2004 and Florida in 2003. Jagger intimidated the SEO realm while the black-hat SEO gurus were busy swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories to trick Google. It became the most difficult algorithm update in the history of the Internet. Another quarterly feature that has spread panic among the webmasers is the introduction of BigDaddy update. Over the last two or three weeks, you might have noticed a fluctuation in the traffic of your website or your site might have changed its position. To remove your doubt, let me explain that these fluctuations are because of the introduction of new data that is still in its beta version, and therefore a site is artificially placed high or low until all the data is brought into stability. BigDaddy is often dubbed as category 5 threat, where most marketers are probably seeing their websites ranked more or less where they were about a month ago.

Even you might be wondering that a major algorithm changes result in significant changes in site rankings, but here everything is more or less normal. The big deal about BigDaddy update is that it mainly deals with canonical issues, duplicate content issues, the Sandbox effect, and supplemental page issues. It ensures to make Google a much cordial place for those who have put in the efforts to build a valuable content-rich website.

One of its biggest purposes is to go deeper in your site with the help of new spider, “Mozilla Bot”. Also the URL Canonicalization, (that means www.abc or abc.com, or abc.com/index.html won’t be considered as three different websites) will ensure that your site gets it due credit. 302 redirects will lose their unscrupulous domination. BigDaddy will be harsher this time because he is adamant to eliminate the effectiveness of purchased keywords and link farms. If you are still employing these “black-hat” techniques then beware of the BigDaddy.

Also expect a change in the Page Rank of your website over the next few weeks. If you have been loyal to Google, then you will likely see your PR improve. Also some of your site’s old content will be re-crawled. Dynamic sites with flash may rise in the rankings while sites that depend on reciprocal linking for their popularity may drop.

Precisely, as long as, if you are not engaged in “Black-hat SEO” tactics, BigDaddy won’t cause you any problem.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Anchor Text Guidelines

Hypertexting a word, keyword or phrase is the practice of placing terms you want a given page to rank for in anchor text that links to another web page or another web site. This not only manipulates the search results but also indicates the weight that the engines will give to the text webpages that are used to link to the landing pages. Also search engines are fond of anchor text because from the user’s insight they are of utmost importance. Precisely by categorizing your pages through relevant keyword links you tell the search engines which keywords the linked pages represent. When used properly these hypertexted keywords increases the relevancy of your web pages to search engines and helps your site rank better for desired keywords.
Especially in Google, Anchor Text has great significance. Hence, while deciding your Anchor Text, it would be wise to

(1) Decide what's best for the user.
(2) Hypertexting the keyword that is easily understood by the user.
(3) Honesty pays. Be straightforward about your anchor text.
(4) Use them sensibly in navigation maps because these are the links that are most often used by the site visitors.
(5) The Index page of your site is the messenger of your intentions. All content interpreted on the INDEX page MUST be in accordance to the needs of live-visitors and Search Engine Spiders. The INDEX page often has a higher page rank than internal pages, so it becomes all the more very important to chose the Anchor Text sensibly because the more forceful it will be the more it will push spider traffic while correlating the keyword (anchor text) with the landing page.
(6) Anchor Links on internal pages do not have high relevance but is important to the visitors. It also adds to a good internal linking strategy.
(7) The external link strategy calls for effective anchor text selection.
(8) Creating a clutter of hyperlinks at the bottom of the page does not yield any good. An effective link positioning is from top left to bottom right.
(9) Exact anchors that best support the content on the landing page are highly revered by the search engines.
(10) Internal site linking structure has a considerable impact on sustaining weight, relevancy, and Page Rank to similar contemporary pages.

http://www.segnant.com

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Understanding Google Patent Application

A Useful Exercise For Search Engine Experts

Those who are into search engine optimization business or those who have a lot of interest and aptitude for SEO need to understand the patent application document of the search engines in order to pursue optimization in a better and more efficient manner. A patent application contains all the details regarding how a search engine ranks a web page. To put in simple words, it is an application that stipulates the methods for identifying, obtaining history data, and scoring, a document based on one or more types of history data.

We all know how much Google values link exchange for ranking sites, but it also suggests the techniques and methods to be used for undertaking a link strategy. It warns against linking in bunches and in bulk and prefers those sites that do linking slowly and consistently over a period of time.

In order to consider a site as legal, honest, and legitimate, Google checks the historical data of a linking program, looking at the date of the links, life span of the link, speed of obtaining links. This shows that Google is not very happy about websites buying links in bulk and considers natural linking strategy to be most preffered method.

In this patent application, Google, in a way, tries to hide the evaluation method by listing factors that might be used in evaluating the links to a site, like anchor text, discovery date, growth rate of links, rate of appearance and disappearance of links, age of links, constant link growth, bulk linking, etc.

As the saying goes, "slow and steady wins the race". This holds true for search engine optimization too. A steady approach is what will take your site to the top rankings in Google. Have patience, indulge in legitimate and honest seo practices, and you will surely get the required results.

http://www.segnant.com/

Thursday, April 20, 2006

How Search Engines and High Rankings streamline your business

When it comes to Internet marketing, the quest for leading the list when people search for keywords related to your product or service has become so vital that almost every online entrepreneur has become aware of the importance of high ranking. Leading the list or being near the top of the list has become an important part of the online marketing buzz that considerably streamlines the profits of any business, provided it generates traffic. Even though there are numerous other ways to grab the attention of targeted consumers, but nothing can compare to the individuality of search engine rankings. The timely modifications of the Search Engine algorithms often mars your continuous efforts of competing for the rankings, but if certain guidelines and time-tested tricks of the business are incorporated, it is ensured that you will have a successful campaign.
Indeed the best way to optimize your site without messing with the search engines is to be ethical on your part and creating a site that is not only for the users but also for the search engines. Also working against spammers is an important aspect that can’t be overlooked. As a matter of fact search engines like google, and yahoo always remain one step ahead of the so-called marketing gurus who try to exploit their super strong ways and lead their list deceitfully.
A time-tested method for achieving a good ranking is the one that I have always emphasized in my previous blogs. Optimizing content using keywords, do not take me wrong here, by this I don’t mean keyword stuffing or using javascript or css codes to incorporate the keywords surreptitiously. Even though this method is losing its relevance but at least it is fair in its approach and ensures that you don’t stand the risk of getting penalized. Once the content is optimized it would be wise to stay updated with the relevant keywords and making the changes accordingly. Keywords, when used judiciously become the key to improve your rankings dramatically. Beware of incorporating unassociated keywords that have nothing to do with your site. This can cause you a penalty. Other places to put keywords include: url, title tags in your source code; and meta tags.
To remain in the meritorious record of Google and Yahoo try to become popular. Popularity as in - by linking to other sites with high Page Rank that share the same theme as yours. You may politely ask the webmaster to place a link to your site on one of their pages, it won’t be any wonder if you just might start showing up higher in the rankings. The more quality back links you have, the search engines will pay more attention to you as a trusted site.
Focusing on Yahoo and Google search engines and updating your content according to their guidelines will drive the most traffic to your website. High-quality content on your site, such as articles, press releases, genuine testimonials will ensure that targeted consumers will find your site valuable source and want to link to it. After your site becomes fully functional do not forget to submit your site to online directories, such as Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project.

One quality link is better than ten insignificant easily gained incoming links

In the realm of Internet Marketing the concept of more is better directly synchronizes with the core of trading online. Certainly it sounds nice that within half an hour your site successfully garnered ten back links, but it is a matter of consideration how significant these ten links are. It leaves us with exception that when it comes to link building one quality link is better than ten insignificant easily gained incoming links. Moreover, boasting off too many links (irrelevant ones) could possibly sabotage your website’s visibility within the search engines.
As we all know that these days the mammoth Search Engines are considering the importance of incoming links to a website when assessing rank, developing a powerful link strategy becomes all the more very important. Quality links improves the relevancy rating of a website, and is highly revered by search engines because requesting a link from highly influential sites is not an easy job. Also these sites reduce the avoidable mess created by the fake people who try to violate the On-Page optimization factors. The adulteration introduced by them creates an inconsistency in the results of Search Engines. Many times you will notice if someone might have abused the "on the page" factors, most likely they won’t be having trusted links and won’t even get any due to their spamming tactics. These kind of sites can initially appear to be the best, but they do not have enduring zeal with chances of losing their good listing too.
The best way to generate traffic and improve rankings is to seek out solid and permanent links related to your website. The trusted links are actually important because they become your benefactors and give your site credibility driving targeted traffic to your site and improving the relevancy rating. However, even here the smart minds somehow crack the codes of super strong algorithm and let large number of links that they obtain through link farms work out for them.
But if this quality time of cheating Search Engine is used in a constructive way, a website can become the credible provider of in demand offers and services. A great achievement on this part would be getting a quality link from a trusted source. Obtaining one link from a trusted source can be cumbersome because they do not issue links to just about anyone who requests them for it. But the credibility that this trusted source provides greatly surpasses the disarray of too many irrelevant links that will lower the popularity of your website within search engines. To get these quality links, start off by submitting your neat and clean website in directories. Once search engines will acknowledge the presence of relevant links on your website, try to obtain more. With time you will notice an increase in your website’s performance, provided your site is optimized properly. Avoid the temptation of obtaining the irrelevant even if they guarantee you fast results.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Building a profitable Opt-In list

Have you ever wondered howcome so many online marketers distribute free reports, ebooks, softwares, services and their memberships? Simply to categorize the like minded people and building an enduring relation with them. It is a proven fact that the most successful marketers who take the contact information of their subscriber and forward them quality and timely mails and help them to succeed; they automatically climb the ladder of success. They know the potential of a large subscriber base and building cordial relations with them. An opt-in list is the real asset of any successful marketer because building a real responsive permission-based email list takes years of diligence and uphill struggle, but the effort is worth it because it enhances revenues and fortifies consumers’ loyalty.

Creating your own opt-in list has an edge over commercial opt-in lists. Creating your own opt-in list facilitates to send customized messages to your potential customers, whereas with commercial opt-in lists the customer will receive an automated message and where its acceptance will be verified. Before publishing your first e-mail, start acquiring the contact information of your subscriber. It is necessary to make a subscriber database at the first place because there is no fun in creating an emphatic newsletter when you don’t have targeted audience. Once a receptive subscriber database is created, provide your subscribers with quality information. Initially start practicing it by providing them with a weekly, bi-weekly, or a monthly ezine.

Over time you might be noticing that even though your inventory is huge, only a small fraction of subscribers are actually buying your goods or services. You might be feeling crestfallen and wondering where what went wrong. Why is it, when others are making money from their opt-in list like a whirlpool your efforts are still unassuming? By following simple do’s and don’ts you can instill a new puff of air in your opt-in list tactics. The thumbnail rule of all the do’s is to gain the trust of people, and maintaining credibility. The strategy calls for writing as many factual articles as possible relating to your niche business emphasizing your benefits.

Recommended
(1) Fortifying ongoing marketing agendas: No one will become your subscriber if you don’t have something substantial to share with your potential customers. With your other marketing strategies include a sign-up page on your Website or wherever your company is listed on a partner or affiliate site. Here the aim is to bring the customer to your sign-up page.

(2) Accessible opt-in option once people reach your site.

(3) Try to know your target audience better, once they opt-in. Put forward only relevant queries such as company name, industry or physical location. Knowing from where your customers are coming from you can customize your message for future communications or promotions.

(4) Be succinct, convincing with users insight. While drafting your promotional sales letter put yourself in customers’ place and think what compels you the most to be affiliated to your organization and avail your products/services. Your readers can be finicky web users and don’t want to go through the stuff where you might have tried to beat your own trumpets. Your message must be compelling enough to influence people to sign up, obliging enough to keep them wanting more, and valuable enough to pass along.

(5) Join forums where you can provide expert advices and recommendations.

(6) Try becoming friends with other successful and professional opt-in list users. Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you the right step of action to generate positive response.

Avoid

(1) Tempting your subscribers with Fabulous Prizes for Signing Up: Though it would sound nice and courteous on your part, but it will only attract leisure enthusiasts who in the allurement of winning a free gift may end up becoming your subscriber.

(2) Cascading your subscribers’ inbox with too many mails.


(3) Avoid being nonspecific in hopes of getting more people to opt in. If you are addressing just one of your audience's needs at a time, try to be focused. In the process of presenting yourself jack of all trades you will end up being nothing to anyone in your opt-in list.

(4) Avoid being extravagant in acquiring names.

(5) Avoid promoting your products/services in isolation: If you want to be successful, be a part of the cat and dog chase. Running for the same goal but in isolation won’t yield any good. Keep yourself updated and learn how different companies build and maintain their opt-in lists.



www.segnant.com

Impact of Blogging on mainstream marketing

Blogs are the online journals featuring personalized comments, suggestion and attitude towards products/services, community, businesses and hot issues. The way they have marched into the mainstream of internet marketing; they have highly affected the traditional and conventional marketing strategies. Since they are the fastest growing area of digital content they have modified our idea of creating forceful content and its dissemination. 37% of Internet users say they read blogs. It is all because of rocketing strategies that have emerged as a result of cut-throat competition for branding products/services and when today’s consumer highly depends on consumer generated media research, feedback and communication, Blogging has already taken off a global approach. It has emerged as a primary source of marketing because here you don’t need a third party to tell our story. If you've got a blog relevant, and your market is a few thousand people, and you reach 100 a day, your sales will get a considerable boost.
Blogging has an impact on all organizations be it Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C). Often volume of discussions and blogs can be seen on B2C organizations. And since blogging is a channel of open extempore discussion, even a single negative account of a consumer can give a severe blow to the organization and can adversely affect the purchasing decisions of many other potential clients. It sucks!!!!!! In the blogging sphere both customer withholding and new customer attainment are extremely pricey. Even high-tech companies are ruled by the power and influence of bloggers and can’t afford to overlook the buying behavior of millions of consumers and companies.
The level of interaction that you see on blogs, shows that people don’t think much of impressions, but of context where honesty and transparency matters. A good harmonized blog can be maintained if the blogger can put over their own factual point of view, by adhering to basic rule such as cordially dealing with the people online, which is otherwise very different from the behavior of the majority of people offline; posting original and fresh content with no tweaking of the old blogs, giving the positive and negative responses their due respect. By being genuine you will establish a reputable status for yourself and your organization, which in turn will lead to customer withholding and new customer attainment. Simultaneously, maintain a complete blog screening and its close analysis so that you may successfully stay on the summit and gain rich competitive target
Blogging is looked upon as simply another way of publishing information on the Internet. Some blogs now get millions, even tens of millions of readers a day. However, to remain in the mainstream, some real tactics are involved where the writer must know how to play with words with special consideration to search engine optimisation techniques.


http://www.segnant.com

Monday, April 17, 2006

Internet Blunders

Internet marketing can sound vague and obnoxious if you do not have pre-defined set of goals. This being the reason many entrepreneurs who have just landed in the field of internet marketing are prone to commit some avoidable mistakes. Building a hassle-free, sassy, responsive web site can be very simple if you guide yourself on the basics of site design and content management. Moreover, if these mistakes are overlooked on regular basis, you stand the risk of committing some fatal blunders that will mar your efforts or at the worst will leave you broke.

The most significant internet marketing mistake committed by most of the beginners is letting yourself or your webmaster take the responsibility of composing your site copy. Webmasters are generally the copyrighted owners of the site and not the professional content writers. God forbid, if they are not trained to write text, they will end up cringing the thoughts that will be viewed by thousands of people. When developing your internet marketing plan, you must be flexible enough to spend few bucks to employ a professional copywriter to create articles and text for your emphatic web presence. You need words that will persuade your visitors, and encourage them to buy your products not the words that simply ornament your site. Professional copywriters are highly educated and only write the words that sell. Their words can guarantee to generate large amounts of traffic.

Another blunder that often mars the marketing efforts is interpretation of your goals and aims via poorly carried out web site design and a pathetic navigation. A site’s design should be such that it is easy to comprehend with clean and simple design, a search box on the top, and proper navigation running down the side. In case your site is highly illustrative with shopping cart options, a small thumbnail picture should accompany each product, with larger, photos just a click away. Good enough would be to have separate sections for sale and discount products and seasonal items.

The third blunder is to become oblivion of including your contact information on your own web site. None of the person in this entire world would prefer to deal with a website whose whereabouts are not known. Always include a telephone number, your e-mail address, and shipping address and everything that lends you credibility.

Branding in Internet Marketing Strategy

Internet marketing is all about hard-core cut-throat competencies, where the general concept of branding has not caught the dog and cat chase, probably because of the huge fortune in the form of endorsement involved in it. Here you need not to get disappointed because there are ways to go about branding your product or service on the net without spending a fortune. Branding of your company and products can be enhanced if you

(1) Start a web promotion campaigning with a valuable web design and strong development strategy.
(2) Practice ethical Search Optimization Techniques.
(3) Harness the potential of Email Marketing Effectively.
(3) Let your marketing forte be influenced by affiliate, reseller, and associate programs.
(4) Scrutinize your site from a professional Internet marketing consultant.
(5) Build a responsive opt-in email list
(6) Distribution of press releases from time to time and publication of articles.
(7) Viral marketing and running interactive contests with a free endowment.
(8) Incorporating email autoresponders to take care of your e-mails send and received.

Branding on the internet is a mammoth task and an onerous aim, unless you are already established in the niche market or you have a loyal clientele. Unless you don’t have heavy assets or no current dominant web campaign, your branding endeavors will be a flop show; at best you will experience only limited success. But still if you are adamant and want to make a niche for yourself, the only lucrative and successful strategy is to pursue a search engine optimization campaign to get pages on your site ranked high in search results.

To make your brand the most wanted one try to identify every single phrase that your prospects use to find services or products related to your domain and then incorporating them in every single optimized page. The strategy will generate generic traffic for your site and secondly your brand will become established. Regardless of what the prospect sought for, they will keep on surfing your site. The hunt for your services will create recognition for your site and credibility in your services. As they visit your site again and again, they will also become acquainted with your USP as presented on the site. Branding simply doesn’t mean revolutionizing and creating something that is over-exaggerated. It just calls for incorporating your modesty with a wee bit more intellect and aesthetic appeal before targeting it at an ever growing market because brand is synonymous to trust, and it is trust that differentiates you from your competitors who offer the same products/services as yours. A strong brand integrates multiple components inclusive of customer interactions, employee communications, business philosophy and advertising/marketing efforts, and the one that extends to your employees, customers, the media and even the general public.

www.segnant.com

Online Advertising

Online advertising opens up new avenues for the entrepreneurs for communicating and corresponding with the target markets with specific interests by harnessing the potential of World Wide Web. By positioning an advertisement on a website it provides the flexibility of customizing the message, information access, sales potential, creativity, exposure, speed, and reach to a global audience. Its extensive exposure is what tempts the webmasters to market his/her products online. Marketers who are versatile and flexible to experiment traditional marketing strategies with electronic environments stand the chances of creating a mutually advantageous conjunction of distinct business participants. And it’s often seen that traditional marketers are categorizing their markets based on conventional targeting method where geographic, demographic, psychographic elements are decided in accordance to when, where, and how to reach their target market. This individualization according to the consumer’s need gives him an access to extensive information and products in the matter of a simple click.

Internet has the best dynamic and multimedia tools for presenting interactive information with pictures, animation, sound and text. It becomes apparent when we come across numerous web tools such as banners, rich media, and interactive broadband commercials attracting surplus consumers’ attention, and at the same time enhancing their brand or sales online. Precisely the interactive potential of ‘cyberads’ has the main advantage for vendors to establish personalized dialogues with customers.

The consumers’ attention in this virtual world of perpetual information and opportunities is particularly highlighted and enhanced by the visual mainstream, because here they have a choice in what and where to by, and as the possibility to compare prices and products and take factors such as service and support into consideration. Moreover, the consumer has become independent and with his own discernment can choose from a whole host of suppliers without any social or regional restriction. With the increase in B-2-C communication, even the advertisers are motivated to take a hold of new strategies to reach the consumer.

Where ever an entrepreneur is positioned, his/her marketing effort has to face a challenge and compete with opposing advertisements. Here the thumbnail rule of being successful is the more straightforward and to the point approach is, the more chance there is for the advertisement to stand out amongst the clutter. The sole aim of an advertisement is to generate sales by generating traffic regardless of what the product or service is, who's offering it, selling a benefit, and suggesting a course of action for the viewer.

Tip:-
(1) Bright colors attract the interest of viewers, while subtler, amalgamated tones lend category and limit to the design. It is important that the colors chosen for an online advertisement should blend with the image of the company.
(2) Pictures grab viewers’ attention. The power of images is that people don't read pictures. They simply view and absorb the advertising message by taking a quick look at it. One good picture is equivalent to thousand words. Moreover, incorporating text into online advertisements consumes a lot of kilobytes.
(3) Banner advertisements:- Measured at 468x60 pixels or 120x600 pixels, the banner ads in its two-third of domain contains a picture and the main advertising points; and the remaining third is committed to minimal copy and call for action clickable buttons. Other layouts include square advertisements, pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials, and overlay ads.

Every good package is not always a bundle of surprises. Same is the case with online advertising. It has measurement problems, audience characteristics, websnarl, clutter, potential for deception, costs, limited production quality, poor reach and lack of Intrusiveness; kind of disadvantages attached to it.

www.segnant.com

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Writing Effective Headlines and Titles For Websites

When you read a newspaper, you engage yourself in reading a publication that your eyes are used to and that you have been reading for quite sometime now and would not like to change for any reason whatsoever. This is not the case in web writing or reading. The web users have millions of other options in front of them on the net and they are not usually loyal to one particular website,webpage, or article. So what you write in the title of your web article or page makes a lot of difference to your online presence and earning money online.

When people read online, they want information instantly and within seconds. What they read first is your headline. And if the headline does not excite or tickle them much, they might not go further. Not only this, on the web, the users can click on links and go to other web pages on the basis of the suggestions made by trustworhty and reliable sources. In order to attract the trusted newsmakers, bloggers, and reviewers to your content, you need to have content that is easily accessible, augments your online presence, and generates more targeted traffic.


Doing this is not a very difficult task, but requires some serious thinking and analysis while creating the title or headline. Remember the following things while writing you title:


Do not have a very long title. A title should look like a title and not a line of writing. 3-6 words would be best, but if you can't help it, then don't exceed beyond 10 words at the maximum. The reason being that search engines consider the first set of words to be the most important.


Take the net as a virtual library and hence give a very clear and jargonese free title. There is no need to play with words because, on the net, people want relevant and clear content unlike a newpaper where you can experiment and take liberties with certain words.


Your title should in a way summarize your content in the body part. Think and act like a reader of your article. Question yourself whether you will be able to imagine the content of your article by just looking at the title or headline. If the answer is yes, then you have got the right title.


Do you think the search words that the user will put in the search engines correspond with your title. If no, you need to rework on the title again and make it representative of the search terms that a reader might put in the search engines to look for your title.


In case you need to add product or brand and services names, you should put them in the end of your title because the users generally like to go to the original manufacturer website, if they want information on a particular product, brand or service.


Always test and verify the quality of your title or headline before actually using it by typing the title in the major search engines and finding out the results. Also check the quantity and relevance of the article that appears on searching for your potential title. Another way is to check if the Google AdSense Ads appear for that particular title. If yes, then you have created a good title; otherwise, you need to work a little more on it.


Last but not the least, don't expect to get the perfect article in one go. Take time, practice and experiment with different titles to reach that last stage of refinement and relevance. It is only with time and practice that you will be able to master the skill of title writing.


http://www.segnant.com/

Offline promotion strategies

Supplementing your online marketing with offline promotion strategies can creatively and affordably promote your online business. By now you might have tried your hands on banner advertising, search engines, both black hat and white hat SEO tactics and link exchanges. Some of them would have yielded you surplus traffic but only because you are an online merchant doesn't mean you've to always remain rigid and promote yourself using online methods. In fact a websites marketing budget can be spent just as effectively using offline methods as it can be using online methods. Website branding can be emphasized by using the traditional forms of promotion. Any offline promotion campaign for your website can get your website visited more often. If your sales letter is good enough it can generate more sales from these extra visitors.

(1) Your URL is your address, your identification online. Getting the address of your site 'out there' and making it visible to as many people as possible gives you a good exposure. The amount of exposure it receives will depend on your presentation. Placing your URL on your company stationery – including business cards, letterheads and envelopes – is a very easy and cost-effective way of telling people about your site. To help your offline marketing efforts your website should always have a banner placed on the top of every letterhead with your website address clearly visible on it. Your business card is also a great means for promoting your Web site. Infact include your URL on every document type items like your invoices, faxes, product packaging etc.

(2) Television: It goes without saying that television advertising rules the mainstream of advertising. It is considered to be economically out of reach of all but actually this is not true. For a local reach local cable networks charge few bucks to boost your publicity. Never go out of your financial domains if your pocket does not allow you to run ads on Cable such as Fox in America or Sky in Britain and Ireland.

(3) Join marketing clubs and organizations.

(4) Distribute free press releases.

(5) Cultivate cordial relations with media sources.

(6) Do as much public speaking as you can to audiences that need what you offer.

(7) Circulate your message to as many groups and people as possible. If at all possible, watch your audience using your product, live and in color and afterwards ask for their valuable comment.

(8) Participate in fairs, exhibitions, and trade fairs.

Friday, April 14, 2006

How to retain your position in the listings of search engines

Constant screening and resubmission are necessary to obtain and maintain a high listing in search engines because it is one of the absolute ways to drive traffic to your website. Most of the webmasters also count on Google’s arrangement of ranking and listing the websites in the top of its lists. To retain the listing of our website we often embed behind the scenes code, but if search engine misleads the end result is always counterproductive. Not only you will lose the listing of your site but also stand the risk of getting black listed. Search engines are smart enough to immediately identify the crooks. The only ethical way to remain in the earnest listing of the Search Engines is to remain loyal with the search engines and following each search engine's instructions and requirements to the letter.

But here your responsibility does not come to an end. You also need to keep a proper check on your listings by maintaining a proper webmetrics. For this you need to meticulously pay attention, even if you are facilitated with good ranking with your Google keywords, because good PR does not always imply a healthy listing. Because of the black-hat SEO tactics, Google has introduced a variety of filters and algorithms that considerably affects the rankings and listings of web pages in its search results. Google constantly updates these filters and algorithms so listings are "relevant" to the keywords people are searching for. As well, Google perplexes the webmasters to such an extent that they are left pondering whether they will be able to meet the challenging criteria to maintain their position. I guess, it is healthy to create a sensation of ambiguity; at least in this way the webmasters don’t dare to employ unethical tactics. If search engines don't make these changes frequently, the search engine spammers will get a golden opportunity to deceive search engines and make irrelevant sites appear in the top listings.

If your website listing has all of a sudden dropped out of the listings of major search engines, to fix this problem fast, so that you don't loose money, you need to make sure that

(1) Your Website Offers High-Quality Relevant Content.
(2) Your site is not over-done with keyword stuffing, cloaking and other deceiving skills. Google’s updated algorithms can now easily identify over-optimized site tricks and penalizes them by dropping their ranking dramatically.
(3) You are not violating search engines guidelines. Some of the attributes that breach the guidelines are Doorway pages, link farming, Hidden invisible links and white keyword text and Mirror sites optimized for a single search engine
(4) Until you're able to get your ranking back, pay per click ads can compensate your losses by generating traffic in just a few hours. Here you need to keep a strong watch on your budget and revenue.
(5) Make use of multiple methods of generating traffic to get a steady stream of traffic. Strategies such as email marketing, pay per click advertising, affiliate programs and link exchanges considerably increase the ranking and listing.
(6) Google is not only the end of World. Exploiting the potential of other valuable search engines can drive fresh traffic to your website by improving your website ranking.

Remember out of sight is out of mind.

www.segnant.com

Affiliate Marketing: One of The Most Cost-Effective Ways To Advertise Your Business

Affiliate Marketing is a widespread method of promoting a website, in which an affiliate is rewarded a share of revenue for every visitor. Affiliate site normally provide free advertising for an ecommerce site. Their compensation is usually based on certain performances like ad pricing structure by which the advertiser pays the publisher according to how many times an ad is clicked on by users (Pay-per-click), a commission structure where the merchant pays its affiliates a flat fee for each qualified lead that is generated by the affiliate (Pay-per-lead), or a payment based solely based on qualifying sales (Pay-per-Sale), or a combination of all. Amazon.com, the online store created the first large-scale affiliate program and hundreds of other companies have since followed the boom. Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliates, whom they call "Associates." Its associates are either independent sellers or businesses that receive a commission for referring customers to the Amazon.com site. They do this by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. After reading this you might be feeling it is an easy process. But even it has its ups and downs. It can leave you broke if you are not fortified with updated information and the methodological how-tos.

Affiliate Marketing creates a sales force network where the affiliate either shares in the revenue generated by sales, or earns revenue for providing sales leads. Affiliate marketing has the potential for automating much of the advertising process like accepting & approving applications, producing unique sales links, tracking & reporting of results. It also has the benefit for generating payment only for desired results (sales, registrations, clicks) making it one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business.

Why Affiliate Marketing?

(1) Its economical cost makes most of the entrepreneurs go gaga over its potential. To generate leads from affiliates on the Internet begins by aiming high traffic sites, with a loyal following. A Web site having online magazine mailing list, or significant daily traffic, is a huge asset for affiliate marketing.

(2) The first month an affiliate joins your network is critical and usually provides the biggest returns. Commodity products such as books and music CDs, and repeat purchases such as airline tickets or investment products sell like hotcakes.

(3) With affiliate marketing, your affiliates could lead traffic to your site.

(4) Brand identity comes into focus with mass exposure, which is a great reason to sign up many affiliates

(5) In affiliate marketing you deal with a global market, where you just need to choose a niche product and prepare all the requisite tools for your affiliates to lead traffic from just about anywhere to your website.

(6) Internet marketers with low budget may get overboard after learning that affiliate marketing involves a low risk factor.

(7) Few sites relatively sell any advertising because selling is their 24/7 job. The affiliate marketing enhances the business prospects by working every single second of the day while targeting a worldwide market.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Knowing something about SEO Web Design

Search Engine Optimization is the process of developing a website that is ethically search engine-friendly and leads to increased rankings for given keywords. Majority of small to medium websites are seldom optimized for competitive online market. But if you are looking to enhance your sales, search engine optimization is not an option but rather it is a necessity. Unquestionably your web site is your business presentation and most importantly of your career. In making a conventional business presentation online, everybody wants to be projected as a responsible entrepreneur. The majority of web sites on the World Wide Web are designed by amateurs or enthusiasts, who have no understanding of search engine optimization. This being the reason, most of the web sites seldom receive any web traffic, and since these sites also don’t contain optimized web content, they don't rank well on the search engines meaning no return on investment (ROI). SEO web design considerably helps a site to maximize on traffic from search engine queries.

Normally SEO is carried out to make the site keyword oriented due to which SEO web design normally gets overlooked. It gives rise to a situation where your efforts are seldom rewarded. To make your SEO web designing effective and increase the duration that visitors spend on your site enhance the quality of your web site. Good SEO web design will load swiftly on your visitor's browsers and will also ensure that your site is easy to navigate and finding the relevant stuff will be extremely easy. You need to implement the tactics very diplomatically because the duration that a visitor will take at your site usually has a very high impact on the revenue and success of your web site. The more emphatic and comprehensible your website will be, the longer a visitor will stay at your site; and the longer a visitor will stay at your site, the higher they impact your revenue by either purchasing something or clicking on one of the PPC ads hosted on your site.

Maximizing on the number of repeat visits to a site is one of the elementary objectives of SEO campaign. It is very important for a site to ensure that it is generic enough to sustain the high and increased numbers of visitors that they get from their SEO activities. Let your SEO design be visually appealing so that each visit is a pleasure for your visitor. Also keep a track of the email addresses of your customers so that you can send them your follow-up promotional offers and remind them about your subsistence.

How to do your own effective Internet Marketing SEO

Real good news is that all those who don’t want spend a fortune can effectively exploit the advantages of free online tools to make their clean sale strongly effective. The news is highly appealing because many of the webmasters are not yet ready to believe that doing Internet marketing SEO is easy because they know the people who have often paid a small fortune for advertisements or for SEO only to receive a flop result or in case if they have earned some profit it hardly substantiate their initial investment.

But now generating quality traffic by your own efforts is no more a mirage and even as you read that many top web masters have already taken the initiative and are busy using free tools to enhance in their Internet marketing SEO efforts, it is not a difficult task. It only requires a good understanding of how search engines algorithm work and a discernment of what needs to be done to achieve top positions in search engine rankings. In a nutshell it will cover your all Internet Marketing SEO requisites.

Now when you are getting tempted to incorporate the free online strategies, at the same time you might also be getting desperate to incorporate your internet marketing SEO efforts. Possibly if you are an impatient webmaster and are raring to go you would certainly love to follow short-term methods that will give you quick results. While following short-term strategies you can get so motivated that develop a need to take advantage of long-term methods.

Now when your patience is working out, let’s give consideration to long-term Internet Marketing SEO Method. As we all know there are various high-traffic directories that allow free submission of sites. You can list your site under the appropriate category…… but here your wait will be your virtue. You will have to wait to get listed. It can even take up to 6 months to get listed. Your wait can be worthwhile because it is a very effective Internet Marketing SEO technique that ends up giving you numerous one way links that are really valued by search engines.

The shorter-term Internet marketing SEO strategy calls for setting a target for yourself of submitting your sites to as many directories. Directories that are pertinent to your site are easily found in your favorite search engine. Another short-term Internet Marketing SEO method is to pay certain high traffic sites and search engines to have your web site listed. It is a much faster way of getting listed immediately. Also your search engines rankings dramatically improve depending on how many listings you can pay for. But, but, but…… many of you won’t be knowing that many of these sites that make it obligatory for you to pay so much money can list your site immediately and for free. How? If you have plenty of quality links from sites that the search engines already rank highly you can quickly get reciprocal links from sites that are similar to yours or web sites that complement your content.

Howzzattt!!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Top Google AdSense Tips

AdSense makes it possible for advertisers to show suitable advertisements contextually on their website. The web publisher earns a fraction of the advertising profits generated as a result of the click. Google Adsense is such a success that many webmasters have built their content websites around the Google AdSense model to take its full advantage.
Google AdSense Tips to supplement the revenue

(1) Targeted Sites
The targeted sites with a clear theme and definite subject yield more publicity and generate surplus revenue because it is easy for these sites reach the decent positioning in the search engine indexing. It is good to contemplate and be cautious while choosing a position.

(2) Targeted Keywords
By using tool like overture determine how much advertisers’ pay-per-keyword. It is a formative step to know the high ticket keywords/phrases. Determining an important keyword is essential because there is a cutthroat race going on among the webmasters to rank well in search engines. It is advisable to bid on the moderately priced keywords.

(3) Matured Sites
Advertisements generally increase in significance with the time. The more frequently a website will be cached by Google the more it will rank better in search engines. The closer the advertisements harmonize with the webpage's content; the higher the "click-through" will be.

(4) Coding
Google generated AdSense code makes it possible for you to test different advertisement sizes and ad placement. It also reduces the obligation of website maintenance.

(5) Tracking advertising techniques
To know how effective a specific website or ad placement is, try to recognize what makes a specific website so emphatic. Tracking the advertising techniques and position of these websites, you will get to know how these advertisements are making money. After incorporating those techniques run your advertisement for a full week to test its effectiveness. Every week you will observe a fluctuation. Comparing the fluctuations in the web traffic will give a clear indication how your approach should be to launch an effective ad campaign.

(6) Blending Ad Placement into a website
The easiest way to integrate an advertisement into a website is to remove the perimeter of the advertisement. More emphatic would be contrasting the link colors with the website colors to increase click-throughs.

(7) Do not try to place more than three advertisements on each webpage. Placing more than three advertisements adulterate the ad inventory.

(8) Advertisements that appear without having to scroll are read more frequently. Let your advertisement be precise, crisp and clear.

(9) Discerning maximum Performing Ad Sizes
336 x 280 mega pixels, 300 x250 mega pixels, 160 x 600 mega pixels in the highest number of click-throughs.

Google’s quality after jagger update

have you noticed something different with Google recently? After its Jagger update the Webmaster community has become panicky. But what’s the fun of being panicky, when the whole idea behind any update is to enhance the quality of the search results. If a site is relevant, then it deserves to appear high in the search results. Also Google isn’t in a business of earning commission for the sites that appear in search results. Its only goal is to give users relevant search results. And if webmasters are providing relevant sites, they will certainly appear higher in the results. For roughly two years Google has incessantly presented a series of algorithm filter changes, which have led to the unforeseeable search engine results, owing to which many clutter-free websites (not-Spam) were released in a row. That was the time when the updates of Google were monthly, which became a quarterly feature after some time. Another quarterly feature is inclusive of the Big Daddy update, which is an update of Google’s infrastructure as well as an algorithm update. It is Big Daddy’s courtesy that the pages seem to go from a first page ranking to a spot on the 100th page, or worse yet into oblivion. Google algorithm changes started in November 2003 with the Florida update followed by Austin, fine brandy, bourbon, and Jagger. Now the SEO professionals and Webmasters are busy treating BigDaddy!

The algorithm updates mainly deals with canonical issues, duplicate content issues, the Sandbox effect, and supplemental page issues. The canonical issues arise when search treats the URL of your site when suffixed with www.abc or prefixed with abc.com, or acc.com/index.html as three different websites. When google cache them, it considers the replication of content and accordingly penalizes them. Getting penalized means losing ranking of all the webpages. Search engines such as Yahoo and MSN are not finicky while dealing with these kinds of issues.

The Sandbox effect affects almost all new websites by placing them on a preliminary "probation" status. All new websites after becoming search-engine friendly and being indexed may perform well for a couple of weeks, but when the filter is applied to the new website (called sandboxing) the site will still appear in the result pages, but it will not rank well despite of how much unique, well optimized content and how many quality inbound links the site may have. The theory behind the Sandbox is that Google knows that a 100,000 page website in not one day task. So it is a kind of time penalty for new links and sites before getting indexed completely.

Replicating content is a black hat SEO tactic and a major issue on the Internet. Some incapable webmasters duplicate web promotional articles on their websites under their own domain name. Google has severely retaliated to this abuse by introducing Google content penalty. But in the process Google has penalized the legitimate ones by considering them to be the duplicates. Google may have to consider this update because a news story is often covered by many websites. About the web promotional content, Webmasters can track the sites which collateralized their copyrights and submit a spam report to Google. But filtering of news story will unavoidably catch some legitimate exploitation.

Supplemental Page Issues also known as Supplemental Hell has been bothering the webmasters for over a year. The Supplemental index is a kind of graveyard for the webpages that are old and have received errors. Once they are deemed inactive seldom they become live. And the worse is no one disputes over the need for a Supplemental index.
The only solution is - Be ethical.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

The mistakes Web Designers often make


(1) Using Frames
To duplicate a page in frames is very muddling for users since the frames split the basic user model of the Web page. As a consequence you cannot bookmark the current page, even the URLs stop working. Worse still is the foreseeability of the user actions is forced to leave the door leaving a doubt what information will appear where when you click a link?

(2) Superfluous embedment of Bleeding-Edge Technology
Do not try to attract users on your site by the boastful use of the latest technology. You can attract some nerds, but the traditional users will be more concerned about the useful content and your capacity to offer good services. To employ latest and largest technology before it is even out of its beta version is a certain way to discourage the users to surf your site. If the users’ personal computers do not support the high-tech embedment, I bet many of them will not come back to your site. So, it is always better to wait until a certain experiment is carried out with regard to the suitable manners to employ new techniques.

(3) Scrolling Text, Marquees, and frequently Running Animations
The mobile images have a controlling effect on the human peripheral vision. Give your user some peace and visionary scope to actually read the text

(4) Intricate URLs
It has been noted that users actually try to decode the URLs of pages to surmise the structure of web sites because they often fail to follow the complex structure of navigation. Thus, a URL should contain human-readable directory and file names of the information space.

(5) Deprived Pages
Ensure that all the pages include a clear indication to which Web site they belong since the users may want to reach pages directly without entering the Home Page. For the same reason, each page should have a link to your Home Page as well as a certain indication from where they enter the structure of your space of information.

(6) Long Pages
Only 10% of users bother to scroll the long pages. With a finicky user interface the critical content and navigation options should be on the top part of the page.

(7) Taking Navigation Support for granted
Do not suppose that the users know as much about your site like made you. They always have the difficulty of finding information, thus they need support in the form of strong direction of structure. Begin your design with a good comprehension of the structure of the space of information and let this structure explicitly communicate with the user. Provide a sitemap and let your users know where they are and where they can go. If you own a large site, sitemap also provide a space for good search feature.

(8) Non-Standard Link Colors
Be consistent while interpreting the colors of text-links. Do not create a chaos with these colors since the ability to understand what links have been followed is one of the few navigational aides.

(9) Outdated Information

Fresh content! Fresh Content! Fresh Content

10. Overly Long Download Times
It is the matter of only 10 seconds. This is the maximum response time after which a user loses interest in the website.

Answering whether SEO marketing really work

As we all know that the principal goal of the search engines is to show the most suitable data available to an exact keyword based on the criteria of ranking as set by the specific search service itself. Meanwhile many SEOs have emerged in the market to address need for your website for attracting the visitors and transforming them into your prospective and permanent customers. This highly target-oriented process of marketing a website requires abundance of strategic planning and quality time because here what you doesn’t matter; but what search engines think does really matters. When looked deeply the top 10 results for any given search, with a good rank is the collective outcome of several SEO tactics.

SEO Marketing not only works but in fact is highly effective in making your site a success. Though there are more difficult to understand things that contribute to make your site a realistic professional sales presentation, but it is a job of your SEO specialist to add relevancy points to your website. The more adequate your site will be, the more your site stands the chances of becoming a popular destination on the World Wide Web. The SEO professionals cater to all the services to please the crawlers and reward your site with a high ranking.

SEO marketing techniques have successfully harnessed the supremacy of internet. It has a lot of publicity and panic attached to it simply because the leading search engines are looked upon as the object of an extended or difficult quest of successful marketing for any business. Till date no other online marketing tools or methods have proved to be anywhere near as effective as SEO marketing techniques. The SEO’s reduced marketing costs, long term growth in site visitors, and most importantly enhancement of sales or leads have made the king of marketing tactics.

Traditionally, when the search engines constantly changed and modified caused great panic amongst many web masters since it caused the site’s ranks to slip to oblivion thus wiping out their daily traffic instantly. It was often more frustrating because it involved a lot of time and money on SEO marketing. Driving traffic from search engines is a strategic task which requires a high proficiency and a methodological approach. Hence, one should be very vigilant when appointing an SEO firm to work on their SEO marketing. Other than SEO tactics some other methods that ensure quick results are

(1) Writing blogs with RSS feeds
(2) Article Writing and Distribution
(3) Free press Releases
(4) Link Building Services (Reciprocal)
(5) Directory Submission Services
(6) Testimonials
(7) Viral marketing
(8) E-mail marketing

Any SEO marketing decisions made with the end user in mind is sure to help a site enjoy long term profit and traffic, irrespective of what changes search engines make.

Why small businesses do not pay enough attention to SEO?

This is not an undisputed thought but the majority of the experts say that small businesses are missing something by not paying enough attention to SEO. However, one thing that all agree on is that the search engines are an essential for the existence of website. But as a matter of fact, nine out of ten, small businesses do not take advantage of even the most basic techniques to optimize their sites. They are of the preconceived notion that having a site is all that they need for being popular on the internet. But it is not true; a beautiful site if not optimized properly is seldom crawled or indexed by the cobweb farm.

Somehow, if the small businesses plan to initiate their own SEO campaigns, like an ignorant internet businessman without soliciting the advice of their marketing person handover their valued project to a webmaster or any internal IT resource. A technical person will think with a technical bent of mind and will often disregard the terms and guidelines of the major search engines. S/he will optimize the site with unethical SEO methods such as doorway pages or hidden text. As we all now about the Google Death Penalty that BMW suffered. The site was penalized and stood the risk of being banned altogether for violating Google’s TOS, but it was the case that happened with a bigger cosmopolitan site. As a matter of fact BMW was making fool of Google from the last three years, but the appeal of the site was such that it had a pull that its listing was reinstated within a day. Small Companies on the contrary can’t suffer the wrath and loss in a single stroke because they don’t have that sort of pull.

It can’t be denied that optimizing a site constantly with the ruling trends is an uphill task. But it is not mandatory for the small businesses to follow the boom and do the mandatory. There are many other small things that can yield good result like optimizing the On-page factors such as their title tags, headlines, etc or adding relevant content every now and then. If a small business comprehends the basics of SEO - and constantly works on providing their visitors with quality and fresh content - they will be on the right track towards ranking at the top of search engines.

The crux of the discussion above is that even a smaller company can practice SEO tactics without the Fortune 500 disturbance of scheduling an endless series of strategy meetings and, making board presentations. In addition, small businesses have the capability to outperform their larger competitors and are able to make prompt changes to their company site that enhance better rankings, because they are not obligated to jump the hoops as a corporate entity does. Search engine optimization should be definitely exploited by the small and medium businesses because here the return on investment of an effective SEO campaign is unsurpassed by any traditional advertising medium.

If you also owe a small business website but competitive enough it would be advisable to hire a firm whose team-oriented approach helps them build traffic, rank better and ultimately increase your conversion and ROI.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Importance of reciprocal links

Reciprocal links can be considered second only to the search engines to get traffic to ones site. The reciprocal links are connections with other sites that are related generally to the subject of your website. The notion behind it is as simple as it sounds. You offer a link to a site and in return request a webmaster to do you a favor by linking back to or website. For some certain reasons the interchange of the links yields you a lot more traffic.
This method of building traffic is very significant and it is free, it is simply a question of coming into contact with the right webmasters and of obtaining the right links. Completely puffed up authentic link hunt however can take time but the advantages which it can bring are enormous including:

Strong boom of concerned visitors

Qualified search engine rankings


The visitors who come from the relative websites are strongly targeted and your product or service has you a much better chance to sell them, since they came on your site by a link on a relative website which you know that they are interested by your site’s theme, otherwise they would not be on a building site which links to you and moreover they certainly would not click through if they were not interested. These visitors are prospects for your product or service and the best principal ones for whom you do not have to pay like PPC ads.

The interesting part of trading the links is far from probable being getting plummeted. Once a link is up on other’s website the chances are that the site will send you the free visitors till it is in the search engine listing. The free visitors are equivalent of the free sales which alternatively equalizes more benefit. The idea behind this is that the more links a site has to more valuable it must be. This method of using the number of links as a relevancy factor helps the search engines overcome the deception of doorway pages since it is of no fun of linking to keyword stuffed cranium of doorway page.

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