Thursday, January 25, 2007

Maintaining High Rankings: Monthly SEO Maintenance Plan

As the famous proverb goes, "Prevention is better than cure", this holds true for the SEO maintenance plan too. It acts as apreventive measure against any sorts of problems in the website that may bring down the ranking of your site.Thus, it becomes imperative to monitor your web site's position and health, time and again, or better still, on monthly basis, like a good doctor, to prevent any loss of page rank or high ranking on the search engines.

1. Keeping an eye on rankings - In the web marketing arena, search engines are the Big-B's who call the shots. They keep changing their algorithms and ways of indexing the sites. To keep abreast with their changing SEO rules and retain your site's ranking, it becomes essential to check your site's rankings regularly. Maintaining a monthly ranking report is a big plus to keep a tab on your ranking over every month.

2. Monitoring the traffic flow - If the doctor comes to know from where most of his patients are coming, or for what reason they are coming to him, he can easily modify and change his marketing strategy accordingly. Similarly, if you know from where your traffic is coming, you can modify the marketing strategy for those pages and keywords that are being used to reach your site.

3. Reviewing the keywords - Simply receiving high ranking for your favorite keywords is not good enough.These keywords need to generate good traffic too. So, the keywords need to be reviewed regularly to keep up with increasing number of sites on the web. Accordingly, changes and additions need to be made to the whole content of the site.

4. Remain one step ahead of competitors - Get into the shoes of your competitors and think like them. See what keywords they are using. Work out the statistics of keywords that you are competing for. Competition is good only till the time you are making profits, otherwise it is wiser to use less competitive keywords for your web pages or use them along with the most popular ones.

5. What's new in your site?- Give visitors more reasons to come to your site. In other words, put more content on regular basis so that visitors get more chances to come to you. Updating and adding new content increase chances of better rankings manifold.

6. Creating an impressive web copy - Even a small error-grammatical or spelling- can break your reputation and reliability. So create a web copy that is meant for your visitors, garnered to their needs and hits the bull's eye right away.

7. Active link Exchange program - The more people you know, more popular you are as more are the chances of them talking about you to others.But that doesn't mean you know every Tom, Dick, And Harry. It means cultivating good and fruitful relations with people related to your field or area. Similarly, the more the quality web sites linking to you, brighter the chances of your site ranking well on search engines.

8. Rid free your site from all navigation problems - Your site should be absolutely free from any kind of navigation or content related problems. Do not offend or make the visitor run away due to confusing navigation, or unclear content.

Take the web site as a mirror image of your business. It reflects your business sense and understanding. Treat it well, take care of it, and don't abandon or neglect it. This is going to be one solid reason for your increased and expanded business.

http://www.segnant.com/

What is Google Dance?

Technically speaking, whenever Google search engine updates its index, the process is termed as "Google dance". This update generally takes place once every month. You can find out whether Google dance is taking place or not from the significant movement that occurs in search results and by Google's collection of all indexed pages showing the status of Google's last spidering. During Google dance, one can see new backward links for pages shown by Google along with movement in search results.

Every month Google orders it's spiders to crawl and archive every website. These websites are then presented in the next Google update. The update is started every 30 days. And the servers are updated individually from one to another. The indexes are updated slowly and not in one go only, in order to prevent downtime. The term Google dance is very appropriate because if you check the results from one server to another during the update, they will certainly differ.

As a result of the Google Dance, the Page Rank values also get affected. Usually, Google Toolbar obtains the Page Rank values from the data center specified by its IP address in the actual DNS record for
www.google.com. Thus, during the Google Dance, what one sees on the GoogleToolbar is the old Page Rank values.

http://www.segnant.com/

Friday, January 19, 2007

Want To Have Higher Visibility on Google?

Try Google AdWords Program

Well we all want our website to reach the top positions on Google. And it is not impossible or unthinkable too. You can very well achieve this by using Google's AdWords policy. It is something similar to the bidding model of Overture. But the strong point of Google Adwords is that it does not affect its normal search results that have nothing to do with bidding.

How Does Google Adwords Program work?

When you go to Google and search for any product or service, the screen that you get comprises of not only the search results, but also some boxes on the right side of the screen. This is Google AdWords program. It works when you identify your keywords and prospective customers and then go to Google for creating advertisements for every keyword selected by you. Then you specify a limit as to how much you are willing to spend on the keyword(s) selected. Now everytime a searcher types your keyword in Google search box, your advert will be displayed on the right side of the search results page (SERP).

How are the adverts charged?

The charges depend upon the position of the adverts in the search result page. And position of the adverts further depends upon the number of users clicking on your advert over a period of time. At present the rates are $15, $12, and $10 (per thousand adverts shown) for positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively. In case, your advert is positioned 4 or beyond, the rate is $8 per thousand.

Difference Between Overture and Google AdWords Program

As it happens with cost-per-click pricing, you will make payment only when a visitor clicks on your advert, no matter how many times it is shown on the search result page. Though, like Overture, the minimum payment is 5 cents. The difference lies in Google's policy of keeping the gap between your bid and that of the nearest competitors to not more than 1 cent for higher exposure. What happens as a result of this policy is that you set the same maximum cost-per-click (CPC) for all your keywords and Adwords discounter will charge you the lowest cost-per-click that is important to retain your position for each keyword.

The bottomline is that no matter whichever search engine you decide to advertise on, you must select targeted keywords in order to get quality traffic and get return on investment by turning visitors into clients.

http://www.segnant.com/

Essentials of Keyword Marketing

The three essential components of keyword marketing are:

Keyword Density- It is the ratio of the count of times a keyword/keyword phrase comes on the page in comparison to the total number of words on the page. It is generally agreed that the keyword density should be in between 1-20% in order to get high rankings in the search engines.

Keyword Prominence- This refers to the use of keywords early on in the page as search engines give more importance to the words that appear on the top or early in the page. In other words, the title, heading, sub heading, description in the beginning, all count as prominent words. But this is not all. You have to keep using the keywords in a properly spaced and relevant manner throughout the website.

Keyword Proximity- Though not a major one, but keyword proximity does play an important role in keyword marketing . By placing your keywords close together in phrases, you get better points in Google. In other words, the words making up the phrase being physically close together within the text is what keyword proximity is all about.

All the three play an important role in your keyword marketing campaign. If you miss out any one of these, you may not be able to achieve high rankings in the search engines and all your efforts that went into researching for the right keywords may go waste.

http://www.segnant.com/

Friday, January 12, 2007

Be The King on Internet

Do not underestimate the power of Internet and online marketing. It is not just an alternative to offline marketing, but a very powerful weapon to advertise and market your products and services to the customers globally. But keep the following things in mind before venturing into online marketing:

Write according to the audience- You must know your audience well and write accordingly. Internet surfers are people looking for highly relevant and specific information and if you don't do proper research about your prospective audience, you may not be able to provide them with relevant content.

Make visitors see your site from your eyes- You have to be strategic enough in designing your site in such a way that the moment the visitors enter it, they visualize what you want to show them. Show them everything in an uncluttered, clear, and professional manner.

Brand image counts- communicate your brand features and message to the visitors time and again on the website. Your brand image and message means a lot and you must communicate it well in all your product/service benefits, advantages, and information.

Simple is better- The simpler you keep your information, more effective it will be. You should keep in mind the fact that internet is a different medium than print and reading on the computer screen strains the eyes. So simple, short, concise, and meaningful content is what you should concentrate on.

Make your site visible- If your site is not visible to people, what's the use of putting in all the efforts. With millions of sites already existing on the world wide web, and many more getting added every minute, where do you stand the chase if you don't optimize your visibility. It's all in the keywords. Right and prominent keywords associated with your site need to be drilled in people's mind by putting them in titles, headers, meta tags etc.

Make visitors return often to your site- Doing this is not difficult if you provide useful information and improve its utility. Like giving visitors the flexibility and allowing them to make changes in their membership records, join forums, post and search jobs, contribute articles, all encourage them to visit the site again and again.

See what your competitors are doing and what you can learn from them- By visiting your competitors' website and carefully analysing the site, you can find out their marketing communication style, strategies, members, staff, kind of customers, and many more such information that you can incorporate in your site too.

If you have not explored all e-commerce options, do it right away because that is one really profit making area and is quite popular. You can achive both name and fame online provided you make your online marketing plan with great care and research. And once your website is established, sky is the limit.

http://www.segnant.com/

Get Your SEO Facts Right

Many people think they are too smart for the web and indulge in different illegal and tricky techniques to get higher rankings fast. What they forget while wasting their sweat and blood on these tricks is that search engine optimization (SEO) can be very easily and comfortably achieved without any hanky-panky.

One of the biggest myths that some so called SEO experts have is that once you know the exact workings of the search engines and the right tricks, you can fiddle with the results. But what they don't realize is that if they get caught (the chances of which have increased many fold now with the search engine algorithms getting tougher and stricter), they can be banned for their whole lives from the search engines.

There are many out there who claim that submitting your website to over 300 search engines makes you visible to 100% of your target market. But let me inform you that leave aside 300, people would not be aware of even 10 search engines existing out there. It is only Google, Yahoo, and MSN that rule the roost as far as search engines are concerned, the rest are just not in people's knowledge or memory.

Another myth that you need to dispell from your mind is that every website benefits from SEO and online marketing. If there are no visitors searching for your products or services, what's the use of spending money and efforts in it? You can easily find out whether there is a market for your products/services by availing our keyword search analysis service.

Saying that SEO alone can improve your and your brand's access and incursion is false and deceptive.
No doubt, SEO can help you get sales leads from search engines. But to convert those leads into customers or clients requires the united efforts of the website owner, marketing team, and internet marketing manager.

So don't listen to people who tell you all these false things about SEO because they can have very dangerous and harmful effects for your online business presence, brand name, and profitability.

http://www.segnant.com/

Friday, January 05, 2007

How to Create Links

If you have good, relevant keywords and a well organized and researched link strategy with you, link optimization process is not difficult to begin and make successful.

The first step in buliding links is to search for those words that are different from the keywords already selected for optimization. These are search words that explain and describe the markets, products, or services related to but not in competiton with your website's selected keywords.

The Link Optimizer then automatically puts these words in the search engines to find the resulting websites which are then sorted and stored in a relational database. You can search for innumerable websites through this process.

In order to have inbound links, you will need the permission of the link candidate's website manager through an e-mail requesting to consider linking to your website. It is an important step in link buliding as it acts as a security check for the client who might have to suffer abuse on the hands of those interested link partners who misunderstand "opt-in" request as spam.

If the link candidate gives you permission, you can send your url to that candidate so that he/she may check your website to further see the relevancy of linking to your site. And after the partner's acceptance and willingness to link to your website, another check is made where you check the link candidate's website and description to ascertain its relevancy and consistency with your linking goals.

If all goes well, specific instructions covering your link text, anchor text, and link description are sent and the final step validates whether the link partner has properly posted your link and a reciprocal link to the link partner is posted on your site.

http://www.segnant.com/

Online Networking Basics: Preparing an Attractive Personal Profile

Well, the other word for networking is connecting with people. And online networking provides one the ability to develop and create a powerful and impressive personal profile of yours for everyone to see online. It provides you with the flexibility to connect and interact with people 24 hours a day for all the 365 days of the year without missing out a single day. Isn't that great news?

It surely is, provided you first of all prepare an attractive personal profile of yours with a photograph before signing up for any
online networking site having user profiles. Your profile must include the following information:

1. Current and recent employers
2. Industry
3. Interests
4. A brief Bio
5. Links to your website
6. Any work published online-blogs, articles etc.

Keep your photograph not only online, but also on the hard drive so that you can have different variations of its size whenever you need it. Never ever have an empty profile as sites don't entertain you well without a profile. On the other hand, not having a profile might also make you miss out good opportunities to expose yourself to prospective clients. So if you have not done it till now, go ahead and create your personal profile immediately if you want to launch a successful online networking campaign for yourself.

http://www.segnant.com/

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Attracting Visitors to Your website

Good you have an amazing website. But nobody knows about it. Does it help you in anyway? I doubt it. In order for people to know about the existence of your website, you need to make it visible to them. There are many ways of doing that like:

1. Get small, coordinating labels featuring your
web address printed. Put them on all outgoing envelopes, business cards etc. Also add your URL in print ads to increase the chances of online visitors getting to know about you and your services in detail.

2. Another unique but very effective way of attracting people to your website is to leave your
URL address in the answering machine or voice-mail messages so that even if you are not able to attend the call, visitors get your website address to receive the help they need.

3. You can request information laden sites (obviously in your field of expertise) to add links to your site. Also adding a section containing links to related businesses before requesting for links will lead to your efforts being reciprocated and answered back.

4. Sending an email newsletter on a regular basis with every week's or month's updates, sales, discounts, launches, and schedules keeps the visitors posted about your business ventures and makes them come back to your site.

5. Asking people to bookmark your site also makes them visit your website time and again. Also while sending your e-mail messages you can add a contact information file and what's new line about your website also attracts people to check your site again.

6. Hosting some competitions online and offering free give-away gifts once a month or so can attract people to try their hand at the competitions or contests too, thus bringing them to your website.

7. News Releases really activate and improve rankings as you can send a news release to industry trade magazines about any unique feature or thing you have and nobody else has.

8. Having an alternate domain name that leads to the same site also helps a lot getting more targeted traffic to your site. But keep the domain names short and sweet, easy to remember.

9. If you have not heard it before, believe me when I say that there are many sites that offer free classified ads so that you can post ads for your products or services on them.

10. Discussion boards are a very good medium of posting your site's content. So, next time when you add any section or content to your site, just post a notice to all relevant forums, discussion boards, newsgroups, etc to increase traffic to your website and also activating people to add links to your website.


http://www.segnant.com/

Network Marketing Tips

Making money is a click away today. Yes, with the advent of internet and internet marketing, any resourceful and enterprising person can easily make money and earn profits online. If you have it in you to strike gold and become financially strong and secure, along with a basic talent and inclination for network marketing, you need to follow the below given tips:

The most important thing is to create a marketing system that is rock solid, secure and beyond any damage or manipulation by anybody else. Not only this, you have to possess a deadly combination of patience and persistence that makes you stand against any odds or business uncertainities.

Another important aspect of network marketing is setting up of realistic goals depending upon the business venture you plan to enter into or market to people online. Also having faith in whatever you are selling and in yourself is very essential for success. If you don't have faith in your products or services, why would others be motivated to buy from you.

Understanding customer psyche and what attracts or convinces them to buy something is also important factor. Moreover the simpler your marketing plan, more effective and wider in reach it will be. You have to constantly learn from others and from your mistakes in order to never commit them again.

Don't forget to give that extra something that prospective clients are always looking for. And if you don't follow up or remain regularly in touch with your prospects, you have lost the battle. In case, you get leads, you have to communicate with them several times in order to convince them of your marketing benefits and advantages.

Keeping yourself updated about the latest news and happenings in your industry and business will also help you get more innovative ideas to market in a better and unique way. Do everything according to priority to remain on track and shun all negative thoughts because they kill creativity.

Reaching a goal or making a profit should not be an end to the journey for you, but just a beginning. It should activate you to perform better next time. Think globally and be ready to take risks and go beyond the expected. If you don't have the guts to take risks or come out of your cushioned life, you cannot think big.

Enjoy your work, in this case network marketing, to a hilt. If you don't enjoy what you do, the chances of success and making profits get reduced to half. Be organized and don't waste your and customer's precious time. To top it all, you need to be quick decision maker and execute them even faster.

So pull up your network marketing socks and start the good work now!

http://www.segnant.com/