SEO FOR GOOGLE
It has become apparent that Google is the king of search engines with the most elusive network of unprecedented algorithm. Building a site that is organically comprehended by Google is like hitting a jackpot. To optimize and rank highly on Google, as with any of the major engines it is mandatory to build a robust site with lots of quality content and easy navigation. A sure shot way of ranking high in Google is to optimize your keyword densities and attain quality links to your site. Also addressing the specific areas like backlinks, age, content, how the site fares in the results are crucial to a site.
Back links: Having a good list of back links is a golden key to attain top rankings on Google. Moreover, Google has its own unique way to reckon the weight of backlinks. That was the time when acquiring backlinks was a game of numbers. The more the links the higher the rankings were. But when webmasters literally exploited its potential Google changed its algorithm. The game of numbers converted into the game of acquiring quality links. Even the quality of links is determined by the age of links, the location of the link, the anchor text and formatting, link’s relevancy, and links Page Rank. The longer your links have been on a web page the higher their value. It shows your efforts that you have been doing since you started acquiring the links relevant to your site. Remember a link that is located within content holds more weight than a link in a typical link-page or directory format with a title and description.
Age: The age of the domain is equally important to Google. The older your domain is the more legitimate it is in the eyes of Google and thus the more likely they are to rank it. Also domains that are registered for longer periods of time are also looked upon as legitimate by Google.
Content: Google is a very choosy search engine when determining the relevancy of content. The relevancy of content can’t be underestimated. The more relevant content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what you are offering when they get there. The more appealing the content will be, the more attention will it grab. The more attention will it grab the more likely Google is to believe your credibility. A blog, press releases are good options for the easy addition of relevant content. It gives Google an insight of your authenticity and expertise in your industry. Keyword densities in content should be analyzed from time to time to make the content suitable for search engine spiders to index.
How it fares in the results: It is important to maintain a webmetrics of your website. Keeping a track how your website fares in the results will help you know the popularity of your site. A growing factor will also indicate that in the coming time your site will gain more importance. If your website is appearing in the result for a specific phrase yet it has not generated any traffic it is an alarming sign that soon you will be dropped out of the rankings. The worse that can happen to your site is that, if your website is clicked after a few seconds Google detects that the searcher has returned to the results to find a new site your site will drop. That’s why it is necessary to write the title of a site that is search engine friendly and generates traffic.
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Protect your site from a Google PageRank fall
Howsoever expert you are in your field; you can’t always follow your preconceived notions of following your own style and use techniques designed to make fool of search engines. It is in your own benefit that you keep on reviewing Google’s guidelines from time to time and stay updated what Google looks for in your website. Following the obvious suggestions like not using frames, not employing cloaking techniques, creating keyword rich navigation and search-engine friendly site map etc. has become a custom, but a revision of the guidelines can help a cocky bunch of webmasters to make out the best of their expertise and the sources available.
Search engine optimizers who have a set method of designing and/or promoting web sites can even become obnoxious in their field or lag behind if they do not follow the pace by which search engines are updating their algorithm. Experts you may be, but it is never a bad idea to go through the basics. It will only add something to your knowledge.
Following may be the considerations that you may be overlooking, though unintentionally, that may cost you your Page Rank or Traffic.
1. Maintaining less than 100 outgoing links per page is not difficult. As a matter of fact, less is more. If you have crossed the limit of 100 your linking practice requires a re-evaluation. Compiling a list of more than 100 outgoing links is qualitative only if the resources are significant for the customers.
2. Dynamically-generated content can confuse the search engines with characters like “?”, “=”, “%” etc. These session URLs denote that there could be an endless loop of possibilities existing for that page and search engine spiders can ignore these pages all together. If the search engines try to spider the page, it can cause a “spider trap" resulting in a huge load on the engine's server. To avoid this kind of javascript spamming check your settings to ensure that search engine spiders are not getting forced on your part to index these dynamic pages and begin a new session each time they visit your site.
3. Some web designers to emphasize the curb appeal of the website use images to display headings or other crucial areas of text. But the branding of a website dominantly depends on its clarity. In addition different fonts may look fascinating to the eyes but it can have a negative impact on readability. The more content deciphered by the search engine spiders the better for your website. Cascading Style Sheets is also a good way of giving your website a look you want give while simultaneously maintaining a clean coding and increasing its readability by the search-engines.
4. Most webmasters consider that by incorporating keywords in the page title and alt tags relevant to the page's topic makes these tags all-inclusive. As a matter of fact Google doesn’t consider the keywords but also sees how descriptive and accurate they are. Google may interpret your page titles as inaccurate if it does not show in the main body of the page as well. You are not free to follow your own sweet will and embed any keyword in page title and title that you feel will look nice on the page.
5. If you have redirected your web page to some other URL, Google guidelines says that using 301 redirects is the best way to let your visitors know that your site has been redirected. Many webmasters are still using the "meta refresh" command, but Google now considers it obsolete because in the past it had a notorious record of being utilized for unethical purposes.
6. Google also suggests you to submit your site in its competitor search engine, Yahoo. Since the websites included in Yahoo directory follow white hat or neutral hat SEO techniques, it becomes safe for Google to include those sites and increase the chances of giving them a good Page Rank. Moreover, when Google realizes that you have paid to be a part of the directory like Yahoo, it gives your site a preference. You can consider it to be a preliminary step for performing well in Google.
7. If you are availing the services of any search engine firm, do not heed to their advice or insistence of linking your site to theirs.
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Points to remember when writing articles to promote your website
Writing articles and emailing them to publishers and webmasters is one of the best ways of giving a standing to your identity. Your expertise when reflected in your words helps you establish an authority in your field. It brings recognition for you and your services. Once acknowledged as a published author it becomes easy to gain a prospective client's trust. Additionally, educating your prospect from time-to-time makes them an even better prospect. It is all not about boasting of your services; the key is to guide them and tell how your services would benefit them.
By now you might have realized that sharing your knowledge establishes you as an expert in your field. It is a powerful way to make your online presence and credibility more emphatic. First, you write a considerate and educational article on a topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit your best articles publishers and e-zines to be distributed among general public and noticed by them and possibly re-published on other web sites. Since each article is spliced up with real, useful information on your area of expertise, many webmasters and ezine editors feel delighted to post the articles at their web sites and in their ezines.
This powerful promotion method doesn’t require you to be a terrific writer. You have to write what you know about your product, provided your knowledge is full-fledged and all-inclusive of your services. The best part of writing an article would be that you will hold a copyright on it. If you can't write still you haven’t lost the battle. There are many services online that will write an article for you on any subject you want. Once your power of words establishes you as an expert in your field, you can easily build relationships with your current and potential customers. Every individual customer will help you give a new angle of how you have to present your content. Some subjects will be easier to find angles for, others more complex, but with a thorough understanding everything can be written about.
But have you ever thought of what are the guidelines that constitute a good article? Let’s face them
• For reference going through somebody else’s material is ok, but incorporating the same language and tone it is not ok. It is against the copyright acts and if caught you stand the risk of getting prosecuted. Do not assume even that you can’t get hold of.
• The average web visitors give a fleeting look to any website. If they can’t find the information that solves their purpose they jump on to the next site. Remember the next site will belong to your competitor. Their gain can become your loss. Make your article attention-grabbing with proper formatting. Let the first two-three lines pull them in and make the rest of the article scannable. Use sub-headings and bullet lists. Keep paragraphs short and crisp with important words properly highlighted.
• It is not always to determine how much to write, but it would be good to give your reader all the necessary information. A list of uninteresting facts will only bore the readers.
• Write informative articles and not the advertisements. No body would be interested in your propagandas.
• By being subtle you become more emphatic towards your approach. Jargon is often not understood by the people. A colloquial language would rather appeal your buyers. Flowery words do not impress the readers. It is your knowledge and simplicity they are interested in.
• If you are having a small hunch even that your article is not up to your expectations do not distribute. Your errors will give your customers an impression that your article has been written just for the sake of writing and for the sole purpose of marketing.
• Proofread your content several times and every little mistake possible.
• Your experience and expertise is your resource, so make good use of it. Write a short informative piece at the end of the article that tells the reader more about you.
• Building credibility is not an overnight process. It takes time to build up a reputation as an expert. So be patient.
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Website Internal Linking As Important as External Linking
It is not only the linking with other websites that proves beneficial for increasing your website's rankings, but also your structure of inner linking of webpages within the site that plays an equally important role in bringing more targeted traffic to your site. Internal linking is the way you link to other pages within your own website.
It is well known to the seo community how important a factor anchor text is for ranking well in the search engines. Just like you put your main keywords in the anchor text to get links from other sites, similarly, you should also put your main keywords in the anchor text to link to other pages within your site. Each webpage from within your own website also counts as a "vote" for your main keyword web page. And the more "votes or links you get pointing to your web page, the higher you will rank for that keyword.
So the bottomline is to pay as much attention to strategising a good structure for your internal links and vote for an inner webpage by using the main keyword in the anchor text within the link linking to that page. Simply doing this can help you rank top for keywords that may not have a lot of competition.
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Importance of Leads
When a visitor leaves his/her names, addresses and/or other details and when the site gets credited, it is called leads. The leads can be fresh and stale. Normally people who recently become your customers or subscribers fall in the category of fresh leads, whereas people who haven’t responded to your e-mail newsletters that recently fall in the category of stale leads. There is also a possibility that people who had shown interest in the past might not be interested in your services any longer. Here the need of the time is to let the bygones be bygones and you concentrate on your fresh prospects who are also your fresh leads. There is no point in going out of the way and alluring the customers who no longer consider your services to be worthwhile. Generating leads is not that difficult. You can either find them or buy them from the organizations that share the same profile as yours. But both of these aspects have a flip side to it.
If you are finding your own leads you need to catch an eye of the people you are targeting. You also need to advertise, create websites, write content and get more and more traffic. But if you are falling short of time and want leads instantaneously, spend few dollars and buy them. Once you will buy the leads, you will be able to focus on your site without any distractions. It would be good if you won’t depend completely on others opt-in list. But maintaining your own is far more productive.
For generating your own opt-in list
1. Launch you own website that has everything related to your business.
2. start your campaign by distributing your own newsletter
3. Do not depend only on the internet. Also use traditional mediums like magazines and radio to advertise
4. Your signature line is very crucial to the success of your website
5. Provide email course to your subscribers and that too free of cost, on your topic.
6. If your budget allows consider PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising to generate traffic for your website
7. Publish articles related to your industry
8. Interactive online postcards are also a nice way to inform people about your existence
9. From time-to-time organize online contests and set a small gift prize for the winner.
Leads are most crucial to any business online. Once a proper list is maintained be prompt in your actions and post a customized message to your lead. Auto response can solve half of your tensions in answering leads, particularly if the leads are in the form of emails. If you keep on delaying in responding to your leads; at the first place your customer will lose interest and turn up at your competitors’ site to avail the same service and secondly the more late you respond the more stale the lead becomes. In auto response the prospect lead receives an instant message containing your name, your contact address, telephone number and a message that you would contact them as soon as possible. Lead generating system has the flexibility that provides you a time gap and allows you to customize the content for the follow-up email.
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Staying ethical and fighting against spam is an effective way to make your direct marketing campaign via e-mails a successful one. Conceding the fact that e-mail marketing is incredibly effective, it is high time that you turn your focus from quantity to quality. Prior to its delivery, exercising a certain dexterity and resourcefulness in responding can make it a truly interactive process for your marketing campaign. To be more precise you can ask your individual customers exactly what they want from you and you can send them personalized email catering to their queries.
To stay on the right side and to make your email-marketing campaign a successful one, the following guidelines will help you out to be dexterous in your approach.
1. If you have maintained an opt-in list, ensure that every message forwarded should be straightforward and simple so that it generates subscriptions for your own e-mail marketing efforts. By paying 25 cents to 45 cents (U.S.) per message delivered to opt-in providers you ca more easily target your potential customers.
2. If you haven’t maintained a list of email addresses for your existing customers, maintain it making it your highest priority. The most responsive customers are those who are a subscriber of a company Web site to receive an e-mail newsletter.
3. Aim to build a growing and a well-qualified database of high-value, loyal customers. Learn about your individual customers' needs and interests, and provide them with a tailored (and profitable) offering catering to their needs.
4. Do not forget to provide a confirmation message whenever someone subscribes or unsubscribe. This is a gesture of courtesy.
To validate an email address you can also use a two-part sign-up process that requires subscribers to click on a link in the confirmation e-mail. Another purpose is to confirm whether the customer really wish to receive future messages.
5. Ask for an alternate e-mail address when users subscribe. If an e-mail bounces at the primary address an alternate e-mail will surely receive the mail.
6. The more personalized your email and content is, the better are your chances of becoming popular. You will hit the jackpot if you provide the customers with a personalized subject line and salutation.
7. A high or growing unsubscribing rate probably indicates that your efforts lack somewhere and your recipients are not receiving much value from your messages.
8. Respond quickly and courteously whenever you receive a complaint from a recipient. Incorporate an e-mail marketing provider or e-mail server software to keep a track of user's database. Complaints are often quickly resolved when users are reminded where and how they opted in to the e-mail program.
9. A privacy policy on your website safeguards your interests as well as your customers.
10. Despite of selling your e-mail lists to others, collaborate with other reputable organizations belonging to your own industry to provide your customers with valuable information.
11. Be clear-cut in your approach that why are you sending the message.
12. Do not make unsubscribe option cumbersome.
13. Do not shun away from providing your identity in the ‘From’ line.
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How Accessible is your site?
User Friendly Site: The Secret behind Successful Online BusinessThere are innumerable websites out there that have a great presence online, but very poor accessibility and usability.You must keep in mind that a website's prime motive and purpose is to provide information to the visitors and not just look gaudy or flashy and confuse the visitors with features and buttons that they are not comfortable with. It is a simple fact that if the visitors find a particular site too difficult to navigate, they leave it as soon as they entered it. Take the example of a supermarket. If things are not arranged ina simple and organised manner, customers don't stick to it for a very long time. Here in lies the value of usability, accessibility and functionality of a website. It has to be user friendly fulfilling the desires or demands of the people in a simple, direct, and efficient manner. People develop certain liking or conditioning to where things are placed in a particular area. For example, we all expect the drawing room to be the first room as we enter someone's house. If we don't find the drawing room as we enter, it would be diffcult for us to find out and navigate to the right place. Similarly, if site features are not on certain pages that the visitors expect them to be,they might not be understood or make sense to them. It is important, therefore,to put feature in places that the visitors are familiar with. Another important aspect of accessibility is your credibility. You have to foster trust and confidence in your audience by providing information about you company, and contact details. This makes the visitors take a sigh of relief as they feel comfortable that you do have a valid and real company operating somewhere. This also serves the purpose of making the contact procedure easier for the visitors.
Google Link Filter:Dampening the spirits of new links
As a part of its latest algorithm, Google's dampening link filter on new incoming links has evolved as a major threat to all those site owners who buy links on other sites to rank higher in the search engines. The Google link filter is a part of the theory that incoming links are not to be given instant rcognition or acceptance in the search results by the search engines. Basically, this theory of dampening filter seems to work on the premise that although earlier incoming links were and still are considered to be a major contributer in the higher rankings and better page rank of sites, now these links will have to stay unindexed and get mature for some time before they become a factor in higher rankings and better pagerank. This dampening filter acts like a security guard at the entrypoint of a building (in this case the search engine indexing process). It scans all the new incoming links, but does not give full acceptance to the links till the time the links remain linked to a site for a given period of time. Only after the links "mature" with time, Google considers them for pagerank or link popularity.
So, all those web site owners out there who have been grinning till now thinking that new links provide immediate success and profit to them by recieving these links, need to do some rethinking. Though this theory, like the two sides of a coin, also has been thought of as just a figment of some people's fantasy, and not really existing, still it would do the websites no harm by taking the existence of this link filter seriously. If it exists, then websites need to do something in order to restrict or end its effects or implications on their sites' ranking. And if it doesnt exist, even then the websites have nothing to lose as by remaining alert to a possibility of its existence, they will be doing good to their sites by indulging in honest, relevant, and well delienated link building processes.
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How to Increase Hits to Your Website
Every website owner dreams of getting more and more hits to his/her website. Because more the hits, better the chances of getting targeted traffic that turns into customers or clients. It is not so difficult a task to achieve, if you apply the following techniques for doing so:
1. List your website in the free directories like Dmoz.com as numerous other websites copy Dmoz's directory and this gives you the chance to place your link on many more websites.
2. Keep updated about your competitors' link popularity as that can help you a lot in changing your strategy accordingly. All you have to do is to search on Google your competitors and then go to linkpopularity.com in order to get your site included and placed on all the relevant sites you find.
3. Link with quality and trustworthy websites because major proportion of the visitors come to your site via the search engines. So it is important that you link to sites that are not only related and relevant to you, but also have a susbtantial amount of customers.
4. Explore where your competitors are taking the visitors and you can find it out by using Alexa.com by searching your competitors' domain names. This will give you a wealth of information related to their visitors, number of visits, types of sites visited by them, related to your competitors.
5. Start an affiliate program, if you don't have one right now. That ways you will be able to get your products and services advertised through other websites.
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Every marketing technique has its pros and cons. When cons are deliberately overlooked owing to the over-superiority of the pros, your negligence pays you back. Whether you are new to Internet marketing or not, there are certain marketing techniques that you definitely need to avoid. They may not fetch you instant results, but certainly eventually you will be crawled by search engine spiders. Try to be in vogue but do not blindly follow the trend because trendsetters are notoriously famous for selling a product in bulk while compromising on the quality.
Following are the flashy techniques that often mar your campaigning efforts:
(1) Forwarding unsolicited commercial emails is a great way of annoying people. It is considered to be the mere wastage of time and money because seldom anyone replies to these emails.
This process includes using efforts of spider to track down the email addresses from the Internet. Although the technique has considerably declined in its approach, but still crooks follow it.
Solution: Built in your opt-in list and forward your messages only to those who are your subscribers. Though it is a time-consuming process, but the efforts are worth it. At least you are read by the consumer, despite of getting deleted from their inbox permanently.
(2) Creating a hype and fuss by offering your product first at a handsome price and then immediately making it available at cheap price. A lot of people can fell that they have been duped by this scam. You will cook a good recipe for failure if you will maintain double-standards. Be cautious of what you say to others in your sales letter. Also avoid exchanging links with pornographic and gambling sites. This way you can hurt the feelings of your visitors.
Solution: Be ethical. Do not hide your identity. Maintain credibility with good reputation and honesty.
(3) Spam Blogs are primarily set up to generate an additional income from programs like Adsense, AdWords etc., but as a matter of fact they offer no real value to the visitor except of consuming their time and money. Splogs can get you penalized for violating the strict guidelines of the search engines, especially Google.
Solution: Sign up for an account at Blogger. Publish your own posts, ideas, and opinions. Also add articles by other writers that you consider will enhance the knowledge of your customers. But do provide a source link so that the authenticity could be retained. Add any content that you feel can bring value to your site.
(4) Do not get overboard by the potential of Blog and Ping. Though it is an effective way to get good rankings in the search engines and to get indexed, but when exploited to its fullest, you would be giving direct signals that your blog is a spam.
Solution: Set up your blog to ping automatically. Set up your posts at least with a difference of 30 minutes, because the blog directories generally do not accept pings less than 30 minutes apart. If you are availing the services of Blogger, do not post more than three blogs per day.
(5) Offering Junk Pages to your loyal readers using software or online tools only hurt their feelings.
Solution: Always aim for building credibility, as well as a cordial relation with your readers. If you want to succeed on the Internet, you need to build credibility, which by no means can be achieved if you are offering them junk. Build content rich sites. Let every powerful comprehensive word convey your strong aims and benefits. It is time-consuming and involves a lot of hard work, but the time is worth spent in.
Doing Business on Net:Increasing Online Sales
There is a difference between doing business online and doing it offline. You may be a very savvy, smart, experienced and seasoned businessman otherwise, but when it comes to increasing your online sales, you need to have done some homework in the internet field. Though the basic principles of selling always remain the same, no matter whatever the medium, but every medium has its own rules, ways and methods of operation. So does the Web too. In order to increase your sales online, you need to understand one basic principle and that is the more people come to your site, brighter are the chances of more sales. When you divide the number of sales made with the total number of visitors to a site, you get the conversion rate of your site that typically varies between 1 and 2 percent.
Online traffic is one factor that plays a significant role in increasing your online sales, but indulging in online advertising can be avery costly affair. It also does not guarantee any change in the conversion rates also. Some of the effective methods of increasing the conversion rates are:
Sprinking testimonials on your site from satisfied customers who specifically explain how your products or services benefited them or helped solve their problems will make a lot of difference to your online visibility. As such people love to give their feedback, comments and like to share their thoughts, so building the testimonials section wouldn't be such a difficult task. Always follow up with your customers with a questionnaire. Do inform them that their comments may be used for advertising.
Always follow up with your potential customers by using auto responder courses, or the auto responder services on the net, many of which are offered for free also, like freeautobot.com
Offer a free sample to them in order to make your products and services more attractive for the users or buyers. If they get a chance to try your sample, they feel you are genuine and this leads to building trust and faith in them for the quality and credibility of your products and services. This startegy also ensures a response from their side when you follow up with them.
Who does not like to get something for free, especially when it is valuable information that the net surfers are hungrily looking for always. E-books can seve as a big plus for you and your online sales, if the content in them is original and fresh.
Make your website very focused, and do not give too many options to the customers. That will divert their attention from taking action. And here action means ordering or buying your product or service.
One time sales are no good. Good businesses always make sales from their repeat customers. Starting a free ezine and asking your customers to subscribe to it can do wonders for your online sales. By taking their permission and regularly sending them information on upgrades or new products, services can help your website a lot. http://www.segnant.com/
