Monday, October 30, 2006

SEO Cure For Graphics Ridden Sites

There are many websites out there that mainly have graphics, pictures, or images and not much of content. These websites are designed so because this is what they want to show to their target audience owing to the nature of products or services they offer. For example a company that specializes in designing different types of websites would like to display or show to the users the excellent work they have already done in this field. This it can do only with the help of a portfolio section of the websites they have actually designed. Similarly a trader selling carpets would like to show nice and attractive pictures of carpets, rugs to the users. The only problem here is that the search engines need content to spider a website. There is no need to worry though. Every problem has a solution and so do the all-graphic websites too.

1. Put some visible content above or below the graphics on the page, if possible. This ways you will be giving some content to the spiders to index. This content should be keyword rich and explain exactly what your site offers .

2. Having testimonials from satisfied clients will further add precious keyword rich content in your pages. Also adding some descriptive content about the graphics that you are showing also helps.

3. Creating some text based pages in the website that are full of valuable content related to your graphics will help bring in traffic to your site. Also give text links using your keywords to your graphic pages. But all these content pages will be interior pages that provide links to other pages on your site and your site provides a link back to these pages. Never use redirects from the text-based pages to the all graphic pages as search engines hate that.

4. Pay attention to off-page strategies like link building to the all-graphic pages ensuring that the pages linking to your graphic pages are using link text having your important keyword phrase.

However the best alternative or solution still is to put content in your graphics pages. In case you or the client for whom you are designing the site doesn't want to change the pages in any way, you can use some search engine friendly solutions for getting good rankings.

http://www.segnant.com/

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Designing the Site Structure From SEO Point of View

SEO or Service Engine Optimization is a complex process that requires careful implementation and should be an important part of every area of website development . Time and again SEO experts have harped on the importance of a well designed site from SEO point of view. And it definitely affects your results in the search engines if some hard thinking is done while designing the site.

Directory or File structure has to be such that when your website is indexed by the search engines, none of your important files are missed out. Always place your most important files at the first or second directory level because the search engines don't go beyond these two levels. At the maximum, they index 40 to 50 files alphabetically present at these two levels. Also the files and directories should have names using your keywords without the use of underscore.

Traffic bringing pages, or popularly called Entry Pages, in SEO must be carefully optimized and submitted. Not a single one of such pages is to be left out. It is always better to make the entry pages as independent and stand alone having all navigation links on them so that when users land on them, they are not confused about where they are, what and who you are. Since some search engines now have image searching facility, it will benefit your site if you name your images and PDFs after keywords.

Site Map is one page that search engines simply love because it has links to every single page of the website. So it becomes all the more important to submit both the index and the site map page. The site map should be simple and easily navigable without any graphics having some information about your company or services on the top before the links.

Link popularity is another factor to be taken care of while designing your website. How many links your site has got, what is the quality of your links, and how many times the users click on links to your site, how long the users remain your site, and how often they visit your site, are some questions that if worked out can affect your rankings a lot.

There are many pages on the site that do not interest the search engines at all, for example Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). In case of all such pages, use a robots exclusion file to stop them from getting indexed.

It is the visible text that is important for the search engines and not the META tags or ALT text that is not visible to the search engines. But including keyword phrases in the ALT tag helps. In fact you can also use logos, image maps, navigation components, pictures, flash work in the ALT tags. But stuffing keywords as ALT text in a clear gif is considered spamming by many search engines. So beware.

Don't forget that your target audience is not only the users but the search engines spiders and directory editors also. Thus you should aim to receive regular traffic from both the users as well as search engine spiders and directories.


http://www.segnant.com/

Monday, October 09, 2006

How To Stay on Top of The Online Competition

There are cretain business fields that are more competitive than others , like real estate business, service engine optimization, or SEO, as it is commonly called. Hence it becomes imperative to handle them in a different way than the normal or not so competitive fields. Take the case of SEO only. SEO is one of the very important part and parcel of online marketing. In order to remain on top of the online competition that is cut throat and very stiff, you need to understand that SEO plays a major role. You may be enjoying a very good ranking in the search engines owing to your good SEO skills, but remember that times change and so does every industry. Thus it is very essential that you keep yourself in tune with the changing times.

A little break or rest from work may work wonders to invigorate and recharge your tired mind and body, provided you utilize that break time properly in sharpening your skills, and understanding the working and mechanism of SEO. You may think that resting is not for you and there is a lot to be done still, but resting does not mean literally doing nothing. It means putting the action in the back bench for som time and spending that time refreshing your knowledge, information, expertise, doing some free minded research, and honing your SEO skills in a relaxed manner.

The benefits of a self induced rest period are manifold:

1. It helps you learn from people who are success stories in themselves and have achieved milestones in SEO.

2. It also makes you look at SEO from a new and fresh perspective, thus bringing in any new angle or edge that you might have missed earlier.

3. It gives you time to research and explore any new SEO discovery, tool, finding or technique that might have come up.

4. It makes you stress free and acts as a stress buster so that you come back with charged mental faculties and with confidence.

5. This will also put an edge on your SEO skills.

A writing Style That Makes Online Selling More Effective

Writing a good online sales copy is not everybody's cup of tea nor is it a very difficult task. All it requires is some skill or craft on your part, some changes here and there, and there you go. Your sales web copy should be like a dialogue that is read aloud by the users or visitors. In other words, giving the users a feeling that the message has been written just for them.

Keep in mind the following points while writing a sales copy for net surfers:

1. Always write as if communicating with a close friend in an easy and conversational tone. Give the readers a warm and genuine feeling that you want them to benefit from this product and don't want them to miss out this excellent offer. Just like a true friend does.

2. Attract the visitors' attention by writing a very interesting and impressive headline.

3. Read the flow of your writing to see whether it flows naturally and sounds very smooth and spontaneous. If it does read smoothly, then chances of it being read and leaving an impact on the readers also increase.

4. Make the benefits appear vividly and clearly so that they linger on in the mind of the readers for a long time even after reading the sales copy. The readers must be able to visualize the benefits just by reading them.

5. Don't forget the call to action line. Your sales copy should be so powerful as to guide the readers towards the action and what you expect them to do after reading the sales copy.

6. You can also talk about the negative influence or impact of not buying the product or service offered by you. In other words, instead of talking about benefits, you can talk about what the users will miss if they don't order your product or service.

7. Decide upon your target audience and write only for it. Work out the people for whom you are writing. Make your writing specific to the target audience so that they can relate with what you offer them.

To cut a long story short, it is very important that you write with the right attitude, for the right audience, using the right words. And last but not the least, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and more PRACTICE makes a man perfect. So the more you research, and read other successful business peoples' online sales copies, the more you practice your your skills, the more you test your ideas, better will be your progress.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Blogging Tips: Key To Online Success

A blog or web log is a kind of public journal published online representing the personality of the blogger or the web site owner. The very fact that blogs are a powerhouse of fresh, relevant, and updated content, search engines just love them. It is another way of people sharing their ideas, views, and thoughts with others on any topic imaginable. In order to write a blog that leaves its mark on the audiences, it is highly essential that you first find out what type of a thinker you are so that you understand and realize your exact potential as a writer. For example, if you are a creative kind of person, you could concentrate on blog writing that is based on idea generation and helping others to come up with new, different, innovative ideas.

The bottomline is that when you write on topics that you are comfortable with and have a natural talent for, the chances of striking the right chord with your audiences increase. And writing becomes less of a chore or duty and more a fun activity. Also use normal, clear, uncomplicated, and layman language without getting allured to write long winding sentences.

It has also been observed that writing about too many topics at one go also complicates the whole thing. Try to restrain yourself and write about one topic per post and don't club too many topics in one blog. Give a plenty of links for the readers to check out related to the topic concerned. And do not forget to have your keywords placed and spread evenly in the blog. It is very important to write fresh, original, and new content and keep updating the blog regularly.

Blogging can really be fun provided you create it with the right attitude and corresponding with your personality. Trying to write about something in which you have no experience, interest or knowledge will surely reflect in your blog. And that is not a very good news for you.