The biggest downside of a penalty from Google is the loss of rankings, and removal from search results. One of the most talked about examples of Google penalty being imposed on a business is that of J.C. Penney. This was a case a while back where J.C. Penney used link building strategies that violated Google webmaster rules. When discovered and written about by The New York Times, Google’s response was to issue a penalty that removed the site from search results.

Fast forward two months, and J.C. Penney is now starting to return to the Google search results, showing it is possible to recover from a Google penalty should it occur.

Accept that the problem has occurred and take steps to fix it

First of all, accept the reality that the Google penalty occurred, and focus on making things right. Determine what caused the penalty and take corrective action to fix it. Depending on what the issue was the fix may be a lengthy process, but this is the first step to take when it comes to resolving the issue that incurred the penalty.

Once resolved, submit a reconsideration request to Google

Once you feel that the problem has been resolved, submit a reconsideration request to Google. This will ask Google to visit your site and assess its suitability to be added (or re-added, in this instance) to Google search results.

If successful, don’t expect results to be what they once were right away. Chances are your site will be quite low in search results, and you have to build up trust with Google that your site should be higher up. Rebuilding is a process that takes time, just like an SEO campaign does in its early days.

Utilise SEO techniques that are within Google guidelines

When re-building your SEO strategy, consider the techniques you wish to use. Google is tough on what it considers black hat techniques, so ensure any strategies you wish to carry out abide by its guidelines. If a link building strategy is planned, ensure that links are obtained from good quality sites. These can be from sites that are an authority or leader in the industry, or otherwise are relevant to your business. Don’t buy links from sites, these are now showing to have no benefit due to the fact that anyone can obtain them, and offer very little value when it comes to your own website.

Be keyword conscious

While keyword research is usually an SEO firm task, you can help out once the keywords are determined by being conscious of placing them in any content you add to your site, including blog posts. Having a keyword appear more than 4 and less than 15 times on a page is a good rule of thumb, as long as they’re varied.

Link back to yourself

Do you own more than one site, or do you run offsite blogs hosted on WordPress or Blogger.com? Link back to your main website from any supporting sites regularly.

Blog!

If you don’t already have a WordPress blog … start one! WordPress is completely free and is a great platform to start building up a lot of content within your site.

Create a sitemap

Sitemaps are not only a fail-safe mechanism for ensuring search engines find your pages, they also help real, live humans get to where they’re going.

Edit your images

Make sure all your images have a title, description and alternate text that contain your keywords for a good SEO jolt.

Get on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

Check out how your competitors, and other well-known, successful companies, use their social media accounts, and parallel those strategies. Link social media and SEO by making sure you incorporate your keywords!

Algorithmic vs Manual Penalties

The length of your Google jail sentence depends on whether you’ve incurred an algorithmic (computer-imposed) or manual (human-imposed) penalty.

Algorithmic penalties constitute the vast majority of penalties to well-meaning sites, and are imposed once Google’s computer sees that you’d exceeded a limit for some activity or done something that is considered to be black hat, like keyword stuffing or cloaking.

Manual penalties are imposed by the staff at Google, if a report has been submitted to them and they find that your site has broken a rule that can’t be detected automatically. These are less common. If your site has been through the Web Marketing Experts’ SEO process, there is no chance of receiving either a manual or algorithmic penalty.

When are algorithmic penalties removed?

As soon as you have identified the action that is causing the penalty and remedied it, you can re-submit your site to Google, or simply wait for the bots to crawl it, and the penalty should be removed.

When are manual penalties removed?

Manual penalties have a set time associated with them, with Google staff acting as the sentencing judge and deciding how long the penalty will remain for. However, if you have fixed the issue with your site, you can put in a ‘reconsideration request’ to Google, and perhaps get out on parole! These requests can expedite manual, but not algorithmic, penalty removal.

1. “I’ve finished building my site – time for SEO”
   One apt comparison is that adding SEO after the site has been built is like adding the electrical work to a house after it has been finished off. Possible, but expensive.
2. “Don’t put Flash in my site, it will wreck my SEO work!”
   Flash itself doesn’t weaken SEO results; it will only have an impact of the majority of your text is within a single Flash movie, and so cannot be crawled by Google. Flash is fantastic for engagement and conversion – the other side of the traffic coin.
3. “We already have a solid customer base, we don’t need SEO”
   Only if you’re happy for your business never to grow.
4. “We already spend lots of many on Google Adwords, we don’t need SEO”
   These two activities are unrelated, and in fact, organic results receive around ten times as many clicks as paid results, even when people are looking to purchase.
5. “SEO has to take a lot of time”
   That all depends. At Web Marketing Experts, we get page 1 results for the vast majority of our customers within 90 days on our SEO services.

Clearly there is a strong trend towards online search when it comes to consumers sourcing goods and services.

What’s shocking is a 2009 MYOB survey that found 60 per cent of Australian small businesses do not have an online presence. If you are a small business owner in Australia and don’t have an online presence take action TODAY!

A simple, low cost, easy to execute first step is to add your business to all the major Australian online business directories.

An online Australian website directory offers exposure to millions of consumers each month, listings are easy to setup and manage. You may view this is an elementary suggestion, but the data speaks for itself. Sixty per cent of Australian small businesses haven’t done this!

Blocking the content using robots.txt

Duplicate content can’t cause SEO issues if the Googlebots can’t find it. However, this is not always the best option, because if you have inbound links pointing to the duplicate pages, they won’t give you a rankings boost.

Use the noindex/follow tag
There is some debate as to whether you can ask Google not to index the content on the page (noindex), but still follow the links (/follow). However, Google says that it is possible … we can only take their word for it.

301 redirects
These tell the Googlebots to assign all the ranking factors (inbound links, content ranking factors, etc) to the page that your 301 is pointing to. This is only useful if your duplicate content comes from your own site, or from an old version of your site.

Rel=canonical

A 301 redirect can sometimes make for a very strange user experience, where it seems that there are multiple ways to get to the same page. Canonical redirects act like a 301 from Google’s point of view, but don’t actually redirect the user.

Alternate link tag

This allows you to assign ranking factors to a main page like a canonical link, but is mostly used in the context of international or multilingual sites.

Duplicate content is one of the trickier areas of SEO, and dealing with it optimally requires a fair bit of experience in SEO. Web Marketing Experts can get you reliable results in mitigating duplicate content issues, at minimal cost. Give us a call!

International Site Setup Guidelines

There are three main site setup options available to make the most of your current reputation and audience while creating a website targeted to users in different countries:

Use a root domain ccTLD

Under this option, you would create different sites with different content targeted to different countries, but under the one domain. So, you’d have:

• www.pollywollydoodleholiday.com
• www.pollywollydoodleholiday.com.de
• www.pollywollydoodleholiday.com.ru
• …etc.

This is a simple method, but doesn’t share link juice or other ranking factors among the different domains.

Use subdomains

Alternatively, you could create de.pollywollydoodleholiday.com, ru.pollywollydoodleholiday.com, etc, as Wikipedia does. However, the results from this can be mixed. Constructing a site in this manner can be beneficial when seperating non-related content, however does not assist in building value into the domain to the same effect as using subfolders.

Use subfolders

Apple’s strategy is to use a single domain, and have subfolders for their different geographical areas. So, your German site might be: www.pollywollydoodleholiday.com/DE and your Russian site www.pollywollydoodleholiday.com/RU. The issue around this is a human one, where searchers from different countries are more likely to click on sites with their country-specific domain name (ie, .com.au in Australia).

The balancing act you need to undertake to decide on the best strategy can be dizzying … Web Marketing Experts can help you get the best SEO result for the long term.

SEO doesn’t ruin websites … however, poorly conceived attempts at creating optimised copy can quite easily do so! Ever encountered a website like this?

If you’re looking for moustache trimmers and beard clippers, you’ve come to the right place. Our website is the best place to buy moustache trimmers and beard clippers. You won’t find better moustache trimmers and beard clippers or cheaper moustache trimmers and beard clippers anywhere else. We invite you to check out our great selection of moustache trimmers and beard clippers.

It’s enough to turn you off moustache trimmers and beard clippers for life! Fortunately, SEO copy doesn’t have to be like that, as long as you follow some basic guidelines.

Vary your keywords

Your SEO company will ask you to think of some keywords which describe your business, and will also use their own methods to determine keywords relevant to you. Think outside the box a little when your keyword list is being built.

Use long tail keywords

Whereas ‘bicycle’ is a short tail keyword, ‘Shimano bike gear’, ‘bicycle repair kits’, ‘kids bike helmets’, etc, are all long tail keywords. Utilising these long tail keywords can help your traffic numbers and conversion statistics as well as making your copywriting sound more natural and relevant.

Use different word forms, acronyms and variations

Google is no longer as specific or prescriptive as it used to be in deciding which pages are relevant to a particular search term.

For example, when you search for ‘search engine optimization’ using the American spelling, you’ll also get Australian results spelt with an ‘s’.

Don’t feel that you have to structure each keyworded sentence a particular way in order to preserve the keyword exactly as it appears in your list – Google’s much freer nowadays!

1. The Who and the What

   Your website needs to tell people who you are, and what you do. You may want to create this content in conjunction with your SEO team, to take advantage of keyword research and placement.

2. A URL That Brands Well

   For best SEO effect, your domain name should contain a unique business name as well as a description of your business – usually your main keyword. It should be reasonably short, easy for people to remember, and professional.

3. Site Map and Search Functions

   When all else fails for your visitors, they’ll look for either a site map or a search bar to help them find what they want on your website. A site map is an essential element for base SEO, also, helping search engine crawlers find every page on your site.

4. Contact Information

   Even if you’re set up for online ordering, people (quite reasonably!) do not trust companies that offer no way to get in contact with them and no physical location or credentials. A web form for contact is fantastic, but should be supported by an email address on your own domain, a phone number, a contact name and business address.

5. Calls to Action

   If you want people to do something specific on your website (Add a product to their cart, make an enquiry, get a quote) you need to tell them to do it! Sprinkle calls to action throughout your content as well as big buttons for the same purpose.

It is very easy to identify the most popular search term in any given industry however these terms actually account for less than 30% of total searches on the Internet today.

The remaining 70% of search terms lie in what is referred to as ‘long tail’ keywords which are made up of the millions of low volume unique searches performed perhaps just a handful of times per day, month or year.

Due to the low volumes on offer, these keywords are rarely shown in the many keyword tools, so how can you capture this market?

What is Long Tail?

Long tail keywords are most commonly thought as being more than three words in length.

E.g.

• Popular: Cochlear Implant Surgery
• Long Tail: Sydney Based Cochlear Implant Specialist

How To Identify Long Tail Keywords

The most accurate data for your Customers’ search habits can be found within your analytics data. If you use Google Analytics, you can find what I like to refer to as the ‘hidden gold’ within your keywords data to identify long tail trends. To find this, simple enter your Analytics account and click Traffic Sources > Keywords and select to show ‘Non-paid’ traffic. This will show you all of the search terms used to navigate to your website.

If however you are just starting out or haven’t been collecting this data, then an alternative is to have a brainstorming session to create a spider diagram of the different product/service categories and subcategories that you provide. As well as helping to identify long-tail keyword advantages this exercise can, if performed effectively, assist in determining a URL and Page Title structure that is absolutely vital for effective SEO as well as usability.

An alternative is to assess the top 10 results (Conventional Page 1 google.com.au) results of your major search term. Look at obvious elements such as URL, Page Title and keyword field of competitors to spot trends in the keywords used to describe the products or services they offer as well as keywords dropped into copy or other products/services cross sold.

How to capture Long-Tail search terms

So just how to you capture these search terms? The first thing to do is to look at the product or service you’re offering. Does your keyword list cover all variations? 10 keywords may not be enough and you may be better suited to a 20 or 30 keyword SEO Package to cover a wider area.

Do you provide unique descriptions of your products with full detail of what is on offer? (E.g. Not those provided to you by a Manufacturer/Distributor that they send to everybody else selling their product), including details such as model number, size, colour or other something else uniquely relevant to the product? By providing full descriptions and every bit of information that is useful to a visitor you can capture thousands of long tail searches naturally without trying to shoehorn random keywords into your existing copy. For example, listing the full specs of a Nikon Camera could result in capturing a visit from a search query of:

‘nikon coolpix camera 6mp silver 2010′

Obviously, you still want your copy to be natural, useful and most importantly engaging for your potential Customer. If you can cover all of the above, you’re making your website more appealing to both your Customer and the search engines who both love unique, relevant and up to date content.

It has been a mantra for some time that ‘Content is king’, and the huge long-tail search opportunities of offer could not demonstrate this more.

Andrew Gloyns – SEO Manager, Web Marketing Experts

What is Google Instant?

For a while now Google has been serving up suggestions for results as you type through ‘Google Suggest’, helping you hit submit quicker to see the results. Google Instant is the next step on from this – delivering the results as you type. As you continue typing, the results displayed will also change accordingly.

The Way Your Customers Search Will Change

Google want to deliver the results to Users as quickly as possible so they continue to use the search engine. As users begin to spend less time formulating their query it is also more likely they will click on the first few results they see. Being on Page 1 and in the top SEO results will be more important than ever.

How Does Google Instant Effect SEO?

There have been some premature suggestions that businesses will need to begin optimising for letters and combinations of letters as well as keywords. For example, a flower company would need to rank for letter combinations from ‘flow’ onwards to gain traffic. This is not true.

The displayed results are for the most relevant whole keyword term that Google suggests. If you begin typing ‘flow’ then you will be presented with results for ‘flowers’. Type a ‘c’ however and you’ll be presented with results for ‘flowcharts’.

What about long tail keywords?

Long tail searches are great. They delivery targeted, well qualified traffic and this will not change. Whilst a User may find what they’re looking for from a broader term, it is still highly likely that the same searches will be made from Users who are looking for a particular product or service. It will be interesting to see if long tail becomes more popular as Users get used to not being served the results they are looking for from generic broad searches.

What about PPC/Adwords Campaigns?

Google Instant will have a huge impact on your PPC campaign as the classification of an ‘impression’ will change and impact your Click-Through Rate (CTR). As results change for every letter that is typed, the Ads displayed will also change to retain relevancy to the search term. Flower or Flowchart ads?

With Google Instant, an impression is counted if a user takes an action to choose a query (for example, presses the Enter key or clicks the Search button), clicks a link on the results page, or stops typing for three or more seconds.

It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need.

– Official Google Blog.

Ads that are momentarily displayed are unlikely to count as an impression and won’t effect your CTR, however if a User were to pause to review results for more than 3 seconds, then this will be measured as an impression.

Unlike SEO, we may find that companies begin bidding for single letters or letter combinations to ensure they are seen first in sponsored adverts. Again, with quicker search Users are also more likely to click on the first few results. If you are not in the top Ad positions, speak to one of our Certified Adwords Professionals today about how we can save you time and money with your Adwords campaign.

Google Instant is yet to be rolled out to Australia, but it’s coming soon. Are you ready? Andrew Gloyns – SEO Manager, Web Marketing Experts.
andrew@webmarketingexperts.com.au

Success.

Everyone wants to get associated with this word. What has web marketing in store for your online business? In selling products and services inside the Internet, there is a procedure that is utilized in order to advance the brands and names for one purpose: to sell. Selling in the Web is different because a website must give concentration on ways to get the attention of users and how they can be baited. Therefore, there are devices that have been formulated to take advantage of the number that gets inside the Internet.

Considering the large population of Internet users, it would be fairly easy to catch them and point them to a certain site. However, these people cannot be manipulated that easy unless there is a common ground for all of them. What is that common ground? The search engines, a tool so widely used and an authority when talking of information gathering. Certainly, the individuals who make use of search engines are scattered all over the globe. Hence, this venue has been considered very viable to give information on your products. SEO is a process in Web marketing that allows your business to be included in the search results.

The first thing that comes to mind when SEO becomes a topic is, can I rank in the first pages? There is plenty of website now so one questions, “Will I shine among the millions of competitor sites?” The answer lies in the potential of this method.

Consider it a privilege for you to know that SEO is a non-expensive method of making a mark in the search pages especially, of Google. Once your site lands in the top ranks, it would be easy to maintain that position. So, it is an imperative that if success in business is being aimed at, Internet marketing methods can help each hopeful to achieve that goal.

The companies that have relied on the guarantee of Web marketing process are now enjoying the fruits of this brilliant technique. Making money becomes a relatively easy endeavor and thus, if they have succeeded, then there is big chance that you can achieve that too!

You can also assess the companies’ credibility and reliability by asking tricky questions. Instead of directly asking them like this: “Do you use black hat SEO techniques?” you can ask them with questions like this: “How long will my site rank by automatically submitting my site to search engine directories?” Scammer sites would give you immediate answers as “in a matter of 3 weeks to 1 month.” Another way of knowing that any of your prospect SEO companies to be hired is a scam can be done by knowing the usual case. What is the usual case? Several cases happen in the agreement that takes place between the SEO Company and the SEO client. Let me mention only one: The scam SEO companies would ask what keywords should be used and you want your site to be optimized with. The credible and reliable ones don’t do this because since they are expert, they are the ones that assign best keywords for your site.

1. Create authority posts as linkbait

In a discussion of building links passively, linkbaiting should always be the first tactic. The easiest way for most companies to do this is to create ‘authority posts’. These are blog posts or articles that aim to be the ultimate authority on a subject. They assume no prior knowledge, and are very comprehensive. They take a while to write, but are well worth it in SEO terms!

2. Add a Share button

People will be able to instantly Digg your content, or post it to their Facebook profile.

3. Be responsive

This is a tactical strategy for SEO success – it seems a little indirect, but it works on the principle that every person you annoy is another person that won’t link to you! Make it a policy to always respond to emails promptly, and to respond to blog comments regularly.

4. Publish great content on weekdays

More people are on the net on weekdays; make sure that is when your content is fresh and showing up at the top of time-ordered Google and Technorati searches for best SEO effect.

5. Cut the fluff

There’s a lot of fluff on the net. People aren’t as dense as they sometimes look! You don’t need to explain everything twice, and if you do, they’ll just read something else.

6. Edit and spellcheck your content

Content that looks professional is MUCH more likely to get search engine optimisation love in the form of links.

7. Write for beginners

The net is a big place, and most of the people that stumble across your articles will be beginners. Write for these guys, or you’ll be ignoring your biggest potential linking audience.

8. Be friendly!

This actually goes hand in hand with ‘Being responsive’ above. Friends are actually pretty easy to make on the net, where you have a pool of a couple of billion people to talk to. Go the extra mile with people … the more friends you have, the better your SEO campaigns will work.

9. Look for feedback

Add options to leave feedback to various pages around your site, and run a pop-up survey every so often. Make it short … don’t make people regret helping you! It will give you lots of clues as to what directions would benefit your SEO strategy most.

10. Answer questions

There are thousands of people who need information on Yahoo Answers, Googel Groups, Wikianswers, etc. Some of them will be asking questions in your field. Give a thorough answer to questions in your niche, but also leave your link in case they want more info, and to help your SEO team.

It is necessary to acknowledge that there is a multitude of web promotion services that can assist in boosting your web presence. In line with this, your web marketing consultant must be able to suggest the most excellent mix of marketing solutions to for your website. Some of these web marketing campaigns may include:

So how can you tell the difference – how do you know whose SEO advice to listen to? Here is a quick checklist to help you sort the wheat from the chaff.

Do they walk the talk?
Is the SEO company you’re getting advice from listed in the top 10 results for one of their core keywords? If not, they probably aren’t using the right strategies … and won’t be able to give you the right ones either!

Ask in person
If its appropriate, ask a question about SEO in person. You can do this via phone, but a better way to do this is at industry events and conferences. Information on a blog can be a bit one-sided; the process of conversation will help you work towards a better understanding of SEO, quicker.

Check their references
Most SEO companies list their major clients. Check on Google how the clients rank for some keywords you would expect to be important to them – if they don’t show up in the top thirty, there’s a chance their SEO might not be so hot!

Search engines aren’t always the best people to ask
Many companies refer to Matt Cutts (of Google’s) blog. It seems like inside information – but in reality, Google has its own agenda. It wants the best quality and most relevant sites to rank at the top for a search … and they won’t necessarily feel that’s your site. Their company goals are not the same as yours.

Listen to your test results
With your webmaster’s help, listen mostly to the results of tests set up to check on your SEO health. When something improves, pay attention … listen!

There are 7 main hooks that are used in linkbaiting content for SEO:

• A news hook
• A resource hook
• A humour hook
• A contrary hook
• An attack hook
• An ego hook
• An incentive hook

If you’ve spent much time reading blogs, you’ll probably be able to think of a few examples of each that you’ve read. Here are a couple of notes on creating each, for your own SEO purposes.

A news hook

MUST be very fresh. If you aren’t constantly on the net, looking out for breaking and trending stories, and if you aren’t able to add a fresh perspective to a story, you shouldn’t try to publish this sort of linkbaiting content. You’ll also need a decent readership to make use of these stories for SEO.

A resource hook

These are the easiest type for most businesses to create, and the great thing about resource-based linkbait content is that as long as you follow a few basic best-pratcices when you create it, the amount of exposure you get will be almost directly proportional to the amount of work you put in. Create a better resource, get more links and SEO-love. Your resource can be an authority list, a tool, a walk-through or a guide.

A humour hook

These can be difficult for corporate sites to pull off. Humour inevitably offends some people … unless there are pets or children involved! Keep these posts relevant to your business, and run them past everybody at the company for a negative reaction. If you find a single one, keep looking.

A contrary hook

Disagree with a popular opinion, or one popular person’s opinion on something. However, you’ll need to be tactful – otherwise you’ll gain SEO success, but lose respect.

An attack hook

Also known as ‘being controversial’. This works well for some, but be aware that people will constantly be wondering when you’ll attack them, if you make it a habit.

An ego hook

Stroke the ego of somebody you want a link from, by asking them for an interview, or giving them an award. A great way to get those single, valuable authority links.

An incentive hook

Offer samples or prizes in exchange for links, or run a content with an awesome prize to encourage links to flow naturally – great for SEO.

1. Keyword Meta tags are important.

The tag awhile back was used to show focus to search engines to help show what keywords were important to that particular site. While it was noted that it did help “dumber” versions of Google to determine keywords, Google now is a lot smarter and can easily determine these keywords without being told what they are.
Here are the facts.

In google webmaster tools, on the dashboard there is a auto populated field called “keywords” , with their significance. I have personally seen this being populated quite accurately on a freshly built site, without the keywords meta tag.

Matt Cuts , Google employee has made this post called – and wait for it,

“Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search”

Myth busted.

2. SEO< will return ROI.
ROI ( return on investment ) is only achieved through SEO, when the campaign is handled well, with the experts in front of the wheel. There are many SEO company out there that claim to provide ROI, that just take your money and secretly return very little. Is your ROI just a monthly ranking report , and nothing else? Is the “expert” guiding your campaign so busy that they struggle to return your calls? If your looking for a ROI , and your advertising investment is online, speak to the ROI experts, Web Marketing Experts. With a proven track record, your in good hands.

3. Multiple sites on the same IP (same server)
This question gets asked a lot around the industry, how many sites can i have on the same ip range before the Google thinks im trying to spam.
Here is a valid argument. Google would know that web host , use the same ip range for thousands of sites. Everyone knows this, and Google must. A popular web host may host similar sites, with similar topics and keywords just but coincidence. And i doubt Google would penalise both sites for the fact that they are using the same web host.
On the flip side, I feel there would be a limit to the amount of similar sites google would allow before penalising said sites. A video i watched by Mat cuts again supports this. It mentions that a web master had 2000 similar sites, and they got penalised , as they were on the same ip. I imagine the Google algorithm working on the grounds of,
“there is no way there can be 2000 sites with similar content legitimately, and therefore , i will wave my penalisation stick around these 2000 sites”

That Mat Cuts Article can be found here

So this one is busted, but plausible as well.

Speed of link acquisition

One very important caveat to the advice you’ll read about gaining links is that faster is not better … in fact, gaining links too fast can get you kicked off the search engines, and destroy your search engine optimisation campaign thus far. Your links should be built:

• Slowly at first – perhaps 2-3 links per day in the first month
• Faster as the site ages
• Faster as your Pagerank increases

Mirroring external with internal growth

It is also important to mirror any link popularity growth you make externally with internal linking for the health of your SEO campaign. There are several options for creating a platform for constantly updated, fresh content:

• Having an on-site blog, where you can cross-link both to pages of the main site and to earlier blog posts
• Having a News or Press section of the website
• Create a Local Events section if appropriate to your niche
• Create a ‘What’s New’ page; especially useful for e-commerce sites.

This internal growth helps re-assure the search engines that your outside link popularity growth is natural, and also provides a greater variety of content that people may want to link to without any encouragement … doing your SEO work for you!

Choose your anchor text carefully

The anchor text for your links was at one stage a couple of years ago, the major factor in Google’s site ranking algorithm. It has since been downgraded – but it is still very important for your search engine optimisation to control your anchor text to reflect your most important keywords – those with the best mix of high popularity and low competition.

Balance between one-way and reciprocal links

When you link to a site, then they link to you, that link has less weighting in the Google algorithm than if the link was one-way. However, one of the major link building strategies in a long term campaign is to link out to other pages … so how do you reconcile this dilemma? The same way you do every other difficult decision … with compromise. Dammit! Link out – but be selective about it. Don’t bother linking to Wikipedia all the time, they won’t link back – select other sites and bloggers that are likely to notice and return the linking favour.

Link building can actually be a little tricky … but there are always SEO experts around to help you!

1 . Offer free samples of your product in exchange for reviews
If you have a truly awesome product or service, this will get you a lot of love in the web community. Offer people free samples of your product or service (if appropriate), and ask them to leave a review on a site of your choice. Some might not bother – but plenty will. Choose a site that follows its review links for best search engine optimisation effect!

2 . Create ‘real’ relationships that could turn into linking relationships
Go to industry conferences and mingle with the people you’d like to get links from. You’ll be much more memorable and linkable if you meet them in person, instead of just as an email signature.

3 . Become a sponsor
A way to feel good about getting links! If you donate to a school, you may be able to get some authority .edu links to really bolster your SEO long-term.

4 . Buy an old authority site
Google likes older domains better – buy a site that already has a good link profile, and start building links on it to your site as an SEO side project.

5 . Make sure you are W3C complaint
Government sites are more likely to link to standards compliant sites, and you can also get a link from the directories of W3C compliant websites.

6 . Leave testimonials
When your business finds a great product, send a testimonial off to the site owner. Ask if they’d mind linking to you, if they end up using it on the site. For best SEO effect, choose a website that doesn’t already have an enormous testimonial list.

7 . Make people feel important
One survey by a salary-oriented site looked at how underpaid mothers were, and gained a veritable flood of links from across the web! In SEO, you definitely catch more flies with honey.

8 . Put photos on your site
Sites that have pictures of the owners often seem more trustworthy, people are more inclined to link to them, and your search engine optimisation strategy benefits. Personally, I prefer the author photographs that aren’t too polished and perfect, but show people in a ‘real’ light.

9 . Interview somebody
People LOVE to read interviews … and they love to link to interviews from their pages, because they are information ‘straight from the horse’s
mouth’. For the time they take to do, interviews are great SEO value.

10 .Offer tools in your industry
Many mortgage brokers offer their own mortgage calculators. Finance oriented sites offer their own currency converters. Project Managers use Gantt Chart templates for project management with Excel. Check out Apple’s list of Dashboard widgets for inspiration for an idea you could have built for your own SEO campaign.

PPC offers many advantages such as near instantaneous flow of traffic, pay on performance, precise keyword targeting, budget control and time control just listing a few. Since results are instantaneous, most SEO companies tend to keep using PPC. Since there are more people using PPC, costs have risen considerably as there are more competitors bidding for the same keyword.

SEO requires more planning and if conducted well, minimizes cost significantly. SEO can be a timely process and may cost a significant initial cost, usually in the form of link buying. SEO can also improve your websites value. A good example is imagining your website as a property such as your house. With an SEO targeted approach, you would purchase land or other houses around it out expand your existing business. On the other hand, PPC could mean renting the land around you.

By 2013, a CNN report suggests, internet advertising will grow from USD$9.1 billion in 2007 to USD$21 billion. Surprisingly, out for the billions spent on advertising, only 11% is from SEO and 87% from PPC.

In determining which approach suits best depends on your business or the product you’re trying to sell. For example, if it’s a seasonal item, and the popularity is only during this period of time, you would want instant results, thus PPC would be the better option.

The image bellow shows the distribution of clicks by internet users in the US. You can see that most people click on the organic search section compared to the Paid, ‘sponsored’ area.
You decide which is better? Or you can consult an Internet Marketing expert regards to whether SEO or PPC is right for you.

These figures suggest mobile websites has become a crucial part of websites to increase their traffic. Currently, nearly all major websites such as CNBC, CNN, The Age and more, have a mobile version.

Most might not be aware that Google has a crawler called the “Googlebot-Mobile”. A very relevant post can be found on the following link, which gives you a basic idea on how different mobile sites are. The Google blog also suggests tips on how enhance the chances of your mobile site getting indexed. Here’s the link Google Blog about mobile sites

The cost of developing a mobile version of differs depending on the complexity required. A mobile site costs around $2,000 for a very basic version to $40,000+ for a site which customizes all pages and tools. The market is still considerably young, thus there are less competition, so the prices are still quite high. I would recommend a mobile website programmer company called Appscore. We’ve had a few mobile websites developed by them and cannot be more pleased with their service. There pricing are also very reasonable.

Most websites do work on mobile phone browsers but for me, it sometimes is annoying to scroll sideways, zoom in or out. Sites which require constant zooming in and out causes hassles to browsers and in some cases, browsers leave. The aim of the game is to gain more viewers, but most importantly returning viewers. By providing them with a pleasant browsing experience, at home while browsing on their computer or while they are out on their mobile phone.

Providing pages in the sitemap is not necessarily enough for it to be listed in Google. Google intends only to index quality pages and this is usually determined by sites being linked to the website or page. As more websites get linked to the page or website, it suggests it is quality, thus getting indexed.

In general, the more quality links that are linked (especially authority links) to the website or page, the higher chances other pages on the site will be crawled by Google and benefiting your SEO.

A good example on how Google crawls for new pages can be seen bellow.

Advertising on Facebook is one of the internet’s newest advertising sensations – with good reason too. More than 400 million active users use Facebook everyday and chances are, they’re browsing with their credit cards handy. Facebook is a clever and powerful marketing platform for any business that wants to interact with its clients as a daily process. With an estimated 300 million profiles and over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook, there is a clear advertising advantage to having a Facebook advertising campaign. The power behind Facebook is that your clients treat their profiles with a lot of trust and integrity and are more likely to fill in correct details and interests than on a marketing survey which translates into accurate targeted ads with clea cut demographics.

Why should I use a PPC model over a Facebook page?

The reality is you shouldn’t. A good social media advertising campaign will incorporate both aspects to ensure your business has a good reach in Facebook. Although pages are great for interacting with your clients, it is the PPC aspect that will generate the most traffic for you.

For more information about Facebook advertising or a quote, email adam.marsh@webmarketingexperts.com.au today to see what we can do for your business. For SEO enquiries please contact andrew@webmarketingexperts.com.au

Google Local
It’s like ordinary SEO, only smaller and easier! Get onto that Google Local page and start prettying it up if you haven’t already done so.

Load time

This new SEO ranking factor might not carry a lot of weight, but it really is a no-brainer. Get a good host, and keep your pages lightweight.

Do your Facebook/Twitter/MySpace pages

Everybody else is on here … and if your business has dedicated fans, they are probably actually searching for your profile.

Create a mobile site
Even small, local sites need a mobile version to cater to users-on-the-go searching for goods and services through their smartphones.

Check your analytics
There’s no sense throwing money at SEO without knowing what results it is creating…

You weren’t doing what you were good at

The only people that millions of dollars with any scheme are those that have a talent in that area. If you aren’t a natural born seller, you’ll just join the 99.87% of people that lose money on the next Amway wannabe scheme.

Investing too much without income

Invest a little – wait til you see income from it. Repeat, and increase. Throwing a heap of money at something is a great way to lose a lot of money.

Information overload

If you’re trying to learn about business on the web, find an SEO company help you … and stick with them. Information overload can lead to fuzzy goals and ill-targeted strategies. And all the SEO in the world won’t help you then!

These gals know about hosting!

1. Don’t host your website at the same place you registered the domain name. Most businesses are specialised for one or the other.
2. Cheaper is not better. If hosting is cheap, you’re most likely sharing low quality resources which will cause site lag.
3. Consider a dedicated server if you have a large, complex, frequently updated site. Having only your own website info on a single server is a form of insurance.
4. Host locally – this will help boost your SEO rankings for local searches…generally the sort that you want!
5. Don’t forget your hosts when you change credit cards! If your hosts can’t renew your domain, they might be taken off the web without warning. Not good for SEO!

1. Planning stage
   Before you even have a rough idea of what your site will include, do usability tests on your competitors’ sites. If you haven’t already used these sites, you can even use your own team as the test subjects!
2. Sketch stage
   When you have some rough (but not too rough) sketches on paper, take them to a user sample to see if they make sense, and if the titles are clear enough.
3. Site design stage
   Once you have the proper design formalised, print out some sample pages and do the same as you did above. Ask your users to explain the navigation.
4. Prototype stage
   When you have your HTML prototype up, check that your users can get around (as much as is possible) and they understand how to do key tasks
5. Dress rehearsal stage
   When you have a complete usable version of the site, spend a fair bit of time testing before you finish everything off.

Is that a REAL excuse?

1. We don’t have time
   If you don’t have time for testing, you’ll have to find time to redo parts of your site down the track
2. It costs too much money
   Ditto above … besides, if you videotape your usability tests subjects, i=this internet marketing activity is actually very cheap.
3. We don’t understand what we’re testing
   There are literally hundreds of usability and web marketing gurus to outsource this to nowadays!
4. I don’t know how to do usability testing
   I’ll explain in a single sentence . Grab a few people from your target market, ask them to perform the basic operations you’re expecting users to engage in on your site and give you a running mental commentary, videotape them doing so and watch where they had trouble later on.
5. We don’t have the equipment
   What equipment? All you need is a computer, a desk and two chairs, at a minimum.

You see … there really are no excuses for ignoring the most important beginning internet marketing activity.

Focus groups

These are usually used in the design stage of a website’s development, or during a re-design. A group of users will all sit around a table and give their reactions to a page, or aspect of the site. They are better to have in the initial stages of website creation – they help sort out overall, abstract-type problems that could affect your internet marketing later down the track.

Usability tests

These are much more specific tests, aimed at getting a typical user to try to perform a task on your website. You’ll have to incorporate some usability theory into your website design long before you actually do usability testing. Here are some guidelines for good usability testing:

• Grab a couple of users to test VERY early in the picture
• You can’t test on yourself. It just doesn’t work.
• Remember that tests won’t ‘prove’ anything – they’ll guide you in a better direction. No company in the world has the budget, or the will, to actually ‘prove’ something in the usability arena.

Ideally, you’ll use both of these internet marketing pre-development tactics to ensure your site’s success!

1. Contact information
   It’s one of the hallmarks of a legitimate business, and one of the things directory submission assessors will check for first.
2. Corporate-type stuff
   This would include having a privacy policy, a returns policy (if applicable), guarantees, etc.
3. Outbound links
   Share the love! Link to high quality sites, and don’t overlink.
4. Images that work
   Your images should display in all the common browsers
5. Java and HTML that works
   It takes a while to get your site listed in DMOZ, and you need to maintain it perfectly error-free until the listing is approved.

DMOZ - The new Yellow Pages

1. Keep your content fresh
   DMOZ cares, just like Google! Current prices, new blog posts.
2. Intact links
   Make sure that you update links whenever you delete or move a page. Users hate broken links (you know that!), and directory submission evaluators do too.
3. Appropriate category
   Not all businesses fit into a neat category. If you have competitors online, you could check which categories they are listed in as a guide.
4. Titles and meta descriptions
   Make sure they are complete, relevant, and succinct
5. Domain names
   If your domain name matches your site title, you will probably find it much easier to get listed … although even DMOZ knows that there are legitimate reasons for having a domain name different to your business name … for example, if your business is called ‘expertsexchange.com’!

To fill out a contact form

In many businesses, contact needs to be made before any sales can occur – in that case you would optimise your web marketing to reflect that.

Register/subscribe to the site

You could also sell subscriptions to your site, if you have a lot of valuable, unique content. As this makes you money, it is an end in itself.

Buy a product or service

An obvious primary goal!

Subscribe to a mailing list

This is a secondary goal – you may want people to give you permission to market to them in future, to increase your chance of achieving a primary goal.

Read your content

This can be either a primary goal (like for blog sites), or a secondary goal (for blogs affiliated with corporate sites, for example).

You have to know what you want, before you tell the customer what you want them to do … and before your web marketers will know how to help you!

1. We can talk to people overseas for free. Skype and other VOIP programs are making global business and other contacts not only possible, but affordable.
2. Services are available at any time of day. Here we don’t just mean the possibility of buying something at any time of day (only to have it delivered when it suits the post office). There are also services we can access 24/7 – online libraries, netbanking, etc. Service based business need to take note – internet marketing is not just for ecommerce!
3. People have access to undesirable information they wouldn’t have had before. Information about explosives, drugs, and all sorts of illegal activities is now on the net .. and very hard to police without infringing free speech, or running into practical barriers.
4. Youtube! There’s no other way to explain the mostly pointless, sometimes hilarious, occasionally very useful phenomenon that is Youtube.

Despite the negative aspects of the net, we know we could never do without it!

1. Business is now often conducted with no physical customers. Ecommerce couldn’t have existed before the internet – now some of the biggest companies in the world don’t actually have a storefront that people can walk into.
2. Businesses are often run with no physical employees. Okay, maybe not completely – but telecommuting and freelancing have seen an unprecedented explosion since the internet became commonplace in people’s homes.
3. Copyright has become much easier to violate, unfortunately. The music and movie industries are suffering especially with the invention of peer-to-peer technology, after the first incarnation, Napster, was successfully shut down.
4. People are now able to publish their own thoughts about something, and have it accessible to a multitude of people at the same time, via Blogger and WordPress’s free platforms.

It’s amazing – and we aren’t finished yet! Stay tuned.

Things were very different before the internet...

1. The word “Google’ entered our vocabulary as a verb – to “Google” something
2. The net has made it possible for us to buy whatever we need, from pretty much anywhere in the world. As long as you’re willing to pay the delivery charge, of course.
3. We can now hunt down (no, not ‘stalk’!) old friends from school, thanks to the one social networking site that just about everybody on the planet uses – Facebook.
4. We can also keep in touch with people we have no interest in stalking far more easily via any social networking site.
5. The internet has made the world seem a lot smaller. Prior to the real development of the online environment, we depended on the television news (or the little-read ‘World’ section in the Saturday paper) to get our overseas news. Now we can get intimate details about almost any other country’s politics, culture, challenges and people.

It’s amazing to think of a world without internet and web marketing now – we continue our overview of life pre-W3 next time!

Look at any search engine optimisation or web marketing guide, and they’ll all tell you that you need great content before you do anything else. So, what makes great content? Turns out there are two ways to make great content – Google’s way, and the visitor’s way. The two SEO tactics overlap more than you’d think, though.

Great content: Visitor’s view

Visitors like website content that is:

• Easy to read
• Easy to understand
• Short and succinct
• Bulleted (!)
• Regularly updated
• Focused on a single topic
• Explains benefits, not just features
• Focuses on THEIR interaction with the product, not the company’s

Your visitors will also appreciate content that includes your keywords – after all, they are usually what brought them to your site, and it’s nice to have that validation of knowing that the page is about what you expected.

However, visitors generally DISlike keyword stuffed content.

Great content: Google’s view

Google likes content to:

• Include keywords
• Not include too many keywords!
• Be regularly updated
• Be unique – not copied from another site
• Be fairly well-focused – one concept or product per page

You can see that both Google, and your visitors, dislike keyword stuffing. Both of them like to see fresh content (it tells them the site is current), and each likes the content to be fairly tightly focused. And the rest of the points are definitely not mutually exclusive!

A big box of golden rules

1. Include your keywords
   Google tells you to do it, and if Google says, we do! Including your keywords in your ads means they appear in bold, and people are much more likely to click on them.
2. Consider your audience
   Your audience is not ‘everyone’, or even ‘everyone who has enough money to buy my product’. Your audience will often be quite specifically defined in terms of age, gender, income level, geographic location, and perhaps other features like ‘physically fit’, ‘computer savvy’, etc
3. Features and benefits
   Every ad needs a feature and a benefit – something the product does, and some way that it benefits the users.
4. Call to action
   TELL people to click through … or they might not!
5. Look at the competition
   Then, do something completely different to what they’re doing.

Still finding PPC isn’t working for your business? View our SEO Packages to see how we can increase your traffic for less and our Web Design that is geared to sell.

Typosquatting

Typosquatting might take several different forms:

• Using an almost identical domain – for example, www.fotlia.com instead of www.fotolia.com
• Using a different domain extension – .net instead of .com
• Different domain phrasing – for example, www.intelligentdesigns.com instead of www.intelligentdesign.com

Why should I typosquat?

You can pre-emptively typosquat, to ensure that nobody else decides to do it for you – this would protect your business assets. You could also typosquat simply as an addition to your main site. Make it obvious that you own the site as well, by using the same branding, design, logos and navigation – otherwise people may well be scared off your site, thinking that you’re an illegitimate squatter!

Why shouldn’t I typosquat?

Well, unless you acknowledge it openly, having misspellings in your domain or through your site just makes you look unprofessional. You might get traffic, but will you meet your internet marketing goals – will people actually convert? It’s a tangled web … one that you should talk to an expert about .

90% of the world’s web searcher use Google when they need to find something. It is tempting to forget about that 10% in your internet marketing … until you realise exactly how many individuals that percentage translates to! The same is true of designing accessible web pages. The number of people who don’t access the web ‘normally’ is small percentage-wise, but enormous in terms of pure numbers. Today we look at the top 3 tips for creating accessible web pages.

Can your website speak to everybody?

Use alt tags

Having alt tags allows people using screen readers to know what an image on your page is. It follows that your alt tags should ideally be descriptive of what the image is!

Include a text-only version

Create a text-only version of your website, which will not only make the page load faster and work better with screen readers, but help you identify semantic gaps that you may not have realised existed when the page has its graphics and Flash elements.

Include descriptive text for audio and video files

This one is great for non-impaired users who prefer to skim-read as well! Of course, for impaired users, this is a critical step, whereas for able-bodied users it is an option.

Will they break down your door for linking out?

Simply linking out is not illegal

There have been a couple of cases in the States where people have challenged the idea that anyone can just link to anyone else’s site. Fortunately, these have been overturned in every instance. If you ‘just’ link to a site that is publicly accessible, there is little to no possibility of legal action. Thank gosh!

Content in frames

It is possible to link to sites so that their actual content is displayed on your site. Unless you clearly state on your site that the content displayed doesn’t to belong to you, and note the owner, there could be legal issues. This is usually done with frames or iframes.

Libelous links

It’s a well-known and very valid SEO practice to use anchor text for links rather than just typing out the web address. This anchor text shouldn’t contain any defamatory opinion or untruthful claims, though.

So, you shouldn’t write: “This incompetent moron thinks that Google is something you use to see in the swimming pool”. Not cool – and the basis for a libel lawsuit.

The link farm can be identified by its occupants!

The basics

Wikipedia defines a link farm as “any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group”.

How do you know if a site is a link farm?

One of the major clues is that they will ask for a link on your own site to theirs, in order to consider linking out to your site.

Another major clue will be their Pagerank. If the site has zero Pagerank (install the Google toolbar and you’ll see a site’s Pagerank in your browser), it is likely that Google considers them a link farm.

If the site has little content in relation to the number of links on its pages, that’s another big clue towards a diagnosis: link farm. If you can’t read 100 words without encountering ten or more links, Google probably considers it a link farm.

The links will be almost exclusively external (to other domains) if a site is a link farm.

And if you value your SEO dollar … stay away from them!

Changing URLs

It is not well understood that Google does not rank domains, they rank pages. So, if you change from a .asp platform to a .php platform, all of your URLs will change, and as far as Google knows, you are a completely new site.

URL changes are managed with 301-redirects on your old pages, and eventually your new pages will start building up their own Google juice. The way you manage the redirects depends greatly on your site size and purpose … expert internet marketing advice highly recommended.

Adding Flash

Your site is doing well, and you can finally afford to add some Flash. As long as you don’t go overboard, and don’t include basic, necessary info with in Flash, you should be alright.

Changing content

Do this with ultimate restraint, if you already had great rankings. If your site wasn’t showing up in the top ten or twenty, then you can rewrite with gay abandon!

1. What’s the difference between black hat and white hat SEO?
   Black hat SEO is often defined by its most common practices. However, sometimes practices previously considered white hat will get you banned by Google, when they change their minds. Generally, black hat SEO is anything unethical or deceptive, done or higher search rankings.
2. What are ‘nofollow’ links?
   If a link on a site has a rel=nofollow tag attached to it, the search engine spiders will ignore it.  This makes non-followed links pretty useless in link popularity terms. However, visitors can still manually click them, and the more visitors you get, the higher your site will rank.
3. Does Google dislike SEO?
   No, they just want people to optimise their site in a way that doesn’t make Google seem stupid … remember that deceptive SEO practices discredit Google’s ‘recommendation’ of a site.

1. How long does SEO take?
   A good SEO company should be able to start getting results for an un-optimised site within 1-3 months.
2. How much does SEO cost?
   This is like asking how much your lunch today will cost. You could eat at McDonalds for about $6, or you could grab some wine and a toasted focaccia for $15, or you might have booked in at a nearby gourmet restaurant last week, and expect to pay well over $50 for your lunch.
   The same variability exists in SEO. Not only are many of the lower-priced options not very satisfying, like McDonalds, they are often downright bad for you. Similarly, the ‘top of the line’ services are usually selling an image as much as their results.
3. Our business is really varied – will we be able to rank for 60+ core keyphrases?
   Of course you can. It is a matter of time, and wholly dependent on the quality of your SEO service, what you are willing to invest in the campaign, and of course, the possibilities for return.

1. What is search engine optimisation?
   Broadly, search engine optimisaiton (SEO) is the process of manipulating (though not in a bad way!) content both on your website and on the internet in general, to help your site show up higher in the search results when someone Goggles for a keyphrase related to your business.
2. Why should I care about SEO?
   Because the web is becoming more and more integral to our lives. Even if you personally spend little time on the net, there are 400 million people worldwide (around 92% of internet users) who turn to Google, Yahoo or MSN BEFORE the Yellow Pages, before their local noticeboard, etc to discover the best place to get a product or service. You don’t have to sell online to get customers through your website.
3. Is SEO all about spamming and incoherent website copy?
   Not at all. You’re thinking of an older style of internet marketing, when Google algorithm was much simpler and more focused on the density of keywords – how many times a particular search term appeared in your text relative to the whole.
   Neither is white-hat SEO about spamming, in any way, shape or form.

Stay tuned – we’ll be going through more critical questions on SEO for newbies this week!

The boredom factor

Turns out the teens have a lower tolerance for boredom that people of the regular homo sapiens variety. Who knew?! In terms of your website design, though, this means that:

• Video is good
• Music is good
• Flash and interactive features are good

However, sites that are difficult to figure out are also ranked as boring. So make sure your navigation is extra-clear, if you’re designing for the 13-18 year old market.

If it’s worth saying, say it big

Teenagers are just as irked by tiny fonts as their grandparents. They may not have to pull out their spectacles, but it takes too much time to read. “Boring!”

The holy grails of teen web design

Sites that find web marketing success with a teen audience often have features like:

• Instant polls
• Quizzes
• Games
• The ability to share pictures
• Ability to make comments

Simply being aware that you have a teen audience and being mindful of that when designing will often lead you naturally in the right direction.

Parental Advisory - Cliched content

Clichés annoy your site visitors – ‘Couldn’t they have thought of something original to say?’ – but it also does your SEO no favours. No searcher types ‘innovative business solutions’ into the little black box on the Google front page. Unless you’re researching for a blog post – in which case you’ll find that even with quotes around the phrase to return only exact matches, there are 57,000 web pages with that term. Hardly makes you unique … or even innovative! But this isn’t the only SEO-killing, unimaginative cliché that people use in their copywriting. Here we explore some of the most annoying!

1. Solutions
   You might feel that your business provides solutions. Most of your customers will feel that you provide you provide a lawn-mowing service. Don’t use it!
2. Innovative
   Your business may truly be innovative – however most customers don’t really care about this. In a way, the majority of businesses are innovative – most have a Unique Selling Proposition. So in being innovative, you’re being just like the rest…
3. ROI
   In some cases it is necessary … just don’t overuse this one!
4. Dynamic
   You know how much your business changes, but most of your customers don’t. Nor do they care – they only want to know what your business does at the moment they want to buy something from you.
5. Challenge
   A watered-down version of having a ‘problem’. Of course, this one is appropriate sometimes – but again, don’t overuse it.
6. The missing piece of the puzzle
   Well, I’ve been guilty of this one . But I’m happy to cop my dues, along with everyone else!
7. Customer centric
   This phrase tells customers that you are an out-and-out liar. If you really cared about making things easy for your customers, you would never use a phrase like customer-centric.
8. Market-leading
   Not everyone can be a market leader … but everyone uses this phrase in their copywriting
9. Seamless
   This means very little, apart from the fact that you’ve reviewed your product or service and found that there are no bugs or inconsistencies. Something that should come naturally, but is not a selling point.
10. Robust and scalable
    Unless you’re in the field of IT, this won’t float any of your customer’s boats!
11. A new breed
    You might do some things a little different to your competitors, but you aren’t an entirely new breed. I’m not aiming to denigrate your business here, just wanting to point out that when you exaggerate these things, everything else you say is less meaningful.
12. Integrate
    Of course, there are many businesses that integrate things. Watch that you don’t make this the focal point of your sentences, though – it’s a very vague word.
13. Results-driven company
    Ironically, all this phrase makes me think of is the fact that the business is making money off me. The result they want is obviously profit. Very clichéd … very much needs to be replaced!
14. World-class
    Your company may very well be world-class. But there are two words that mean little to your customers, and are never going to drive clicks to your site from Google. So communicate your ‘world-classness’ another way!
15. Core competencies
    This sort of language belongs in the office, but not on a website, where you’re speaking to real people.

Go over your website now and see if you can identify any places where you are taking up space that could be used for SEO, with meaningless copywriting clichés.

The internet ... letting us think outside the square for April Fool's Day!

Youtube videos flipped

The Ebutouy prank was pretty cool … when you clicked on a Featured Video from the Youtube home page, the layout of the screen remained the same, but every element was flipped upside down. Would this have been possible to do in school? Nope!

Wikipedia – Every editor fakes it

Wikipedia put up an entirely fake home page for April Fools, including stories about NASA monitoring diamonds falling from the sky, the Irish Prmie Minister streaking in public, and ‘The Museum of Bad Art’ in Boston.

Pi Devalued

Spread by email rather than the internet, this hilarious 1998 April Fools prank comes courtesy of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter (affiliated with the current New England Skeptical Society?), which published an article stating that the Alabama State legislature had voted to change the value of Pi to the ‘biblical’ number of 3.0.

Hotels.com on the moon

Hotels.com once put out an April Fool’s press release telling people that they could book the first rooms on the moon. Price not including travel, of course. Speaking of the moon, in 2004 Google published fictitious job opportunities on their lunar base, Lunax.

Gmail Paper

Google got a bit more crafty in 2007 … many ofhteir early April Fool’s pranks were pretty easily identifiable, after all. This year they brought out the ‘Gmail Paper’ hoax, which was supposed to be a free service whereby your chosen messages were printed out at Google, on 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum (:-D), and mailed to you via normal post. The service was going to be supported by big red ads on the backs of your messages.

Dishonorable mention

: The Conficker virus which was supposed to ‘go off’, destroying the web with a giant botnet, last April Fool’s Day. It was a fizzer … luckily.

What is social media profile squatting?

Well, for starters, although it is recognized phenomenon, it doesn’t really have an agreed-upon name. Perhaps we’ll call it social squatting . Much like domain squatting, this would be the process of looking for companies, large and small, that have not yet registered an official profile on one of the major social media sites. The trolls would then set up a profile with your business name, in the hope of selling it to you at a later date.

Obviously there is a subtext to the offer of sale as well – whoever registers your official profile name on a site becomes (as far as the public knows) the spokesperson for your company. Choose to deal with them in a way they don’t like, and they may find an ingenious way to sabotage your internet marketing and drive away your customers.

What sites should I register on?

Here are some of the popular social media sites that it would be wise to register an official Page, profile or account on:

• Facebook (note that Facebook is taking steps to prevent people creating non-official brand name pages)
• Twitter
• MySpace
• Friendfeed
• Youtube – create a company channel
• LinkedIn
• Technorati
• Squidoo
• Yahoo Answers

But I don’t want to do social media marketing right now…

That’s okay. Most social media sites will let you register a profile, and then effectively make yourself invisible to the public at large. Leave it blank if you like – just make sure the account is registered to your business. This way all that careful brand building and internet marketing effort is carefully preserved.

Yes, it can be done...

1. Build some unique, authority content

I once worked with a company that sold doorknobs, lever handles, knockers and locks, etc. One of the biggest traffic drivers to their site (thousands of visitors a month, for quite a niche business) was an authority piece on cleaning brass items. The company did an extensive amount of research, and put together a comprehensive 2,000 word guide to cleaning brass door furniture with household items. People just keep coming for this sort of content – it needs to complement your product or service and truly aim to help people. Don’t think about word limits when you’re building this content … you’ll end up with just another of the hundreds of pieces of mediocre content on the web.

2. Always use anchor text

Rather than saying ‘Visit www.yourbusinesswebsitehere.com.au for great deals on business websites’, say ‘Keep researching deals on business websites now’. People … and Google … understand the intention a lot better!

3. Get personal with database marketing

This is a big task, but definitely worthwhile. Create an email database with as much information about each recipient as possible, and then use it for targeted marketing.

4. Get personal with a blog, a Facebook Page, a Twitter account …etc

Social media creates a far richer face to your company than just whether you’re in the number 1 or number 5 spot on Google’s front page. This added dimension has flow-on benefits for SEO too, though – the greater your visitor count, the higher your ranking. And the more you interact with customers, the more people are likely to link to your website from their own.

5. Get an expert on your side

This is one of the most important things to remember. SEO is no longer an amateur’s game, and if someone ranks at the top of Google for their search term, it’s because expert web marketing help put them there. If you’re going to compete on a level playing field, you’ll need to call in the professionals as well!

By the way, the only reason tip 5 wasn’t at the very beginning of the article set is that we thought it might stick in your head a little better back here … and it is the most important SEO technique to remember.

1. Don’t compete on price

It’s the lowest common denominator on the web. It’s tempting to think that if you offer a cheaper product than your big competitor, you’ll eventually siphon off all their customers, link popularity, etc. Not true. In many cases, you just end up being seen as the cheap alternative to the ‘good’ product. Being at the top of Google is an automatic ticket to being seen as a ‘trusted’ brand, according to surveys. Being cheap, and lower down, just makes you seem ‘safe to ignore’.

2. Look first to thyself

Sayeth the God of web marketing to his true believers! Make sure your offering is great, that your web design is awesome, that your customer service is in order, before you engage in a full-scale assault on that top Google ranking.

3. Spy on your competitors … to create a point of difference

It may sound sneaky … but it all depends on how you use the information. Copying your competitors tactics will not usually help you beat them. As Ries and Trout (the 27 Immutable Laws of Marketing) suggest, it is better to be first than it is to be better. However, if you want to know how to market yourself as different to potential customers, you need to know what makes you different. Which means knowing what the customer experience at your competitor’s business is like.

4. Ask what your customers thought about transactions

People LOOOVE being asked what they think! And this tactic doesn’t only endear your customers to you … it provides valuable information about improving your business for the future. There may be a tiny piece of the puzzle that your competitor has mastered, but you’ve so far missed completely. Implement a ‘Feedback’ form on your website, or get in contact with people who have had orders delivered via email and find out what they thought about the transaction. It works on eBay!

Keep watching for more ideas from the big list for beating those SEO behemoths at their own game!

Not such a mammoth competitor after all!

1. Persistence

This is the first thing you need to remember as you launch into an assault on the top position. If you only half-finish an SEO campaign, you waste all of it … not just half. Be prepared to go the distance – know that it is possible!

2. Know your market

In some cases a ‘competitor’ may not truly be competing with your business. If you have a slightly different offering, aim to be at the top of Google for the search terms that best describe your business. Know your unique selling point, and exploit it to the max!

3. Use review sites to boost your business name

Ask your customers to leave reviews of your business on well-respected review sites. If you’re in the tourism industry, Tripadvisor is the big name – but every industry can use sites like www.productreview.com.au. Please avoid the temptation to use review sites to denigrate your competitor(s)’ reputations, though! Keep it clean, people.

4. Don’t forget Google Local

Make sure you use your Google Local profile to the fullest extent possible. Add all the information you can Add your prices in Google Local as well – so many people use the internet for price comparisons, and may simply pass over your business if getting a price is too much like hard work. Price isn’t always the determining factor in supplier choice for the majority of people, anyway.

5. Don’t forget Google Local Reviews!

These may be one of the first things that prospective customers see – Google Local results often show up very high on the results listing, and click-throughs are a lot more evenly spread for these ten results. Get your satisfied customers to leave reviews here to start boosting your traffic.

Stay tuned – we’ll be looking at more ways to beat a behemoth SEO competitor in the coming days.

What type of Tweet is it?

Much like the cells in your body, having a single ‘type’ of Tweet just won’t work for your business. Every cells in your body needs most of the other cells in order to function … and in the same way, you need a well-rounded repertoire of Tweets in order to create a viable ‘organism’ of a business Twitter profile. Here are some of the types of Tweets you can, and should, be using:

• Retweets – If you come across something your followers might find interesting, you can re-tweet it
• Opinions and observations – Keep them professional, though. Be positive – don’t derogate anybody, especially your competitors or bad customers, tempting as it might be.
• What you are reading or watching: Share a link to interesting content you’ve found
• Events and plans – If you have an upcoming event for the public to attend, tweet about it often
• Content promotion – many blogs can be set to auto-tweet new posts. You may prefer to select Tweet-worthy content yourself.
• Replies: If somebody asks you a question via Twitter … answer them! (Refer to 4 Principles of Customer Service in Internet marketing)
• Quotes: I love quotes. Some people don’t love quotes. A small percentage is great to have as part of your Twitter ‘organism’.

The Control Centre

The link that you use is like the brain of many of your Tweets – the tweet itself would be useless without it. Twitter automatically uses bit.ly, but you may prefer another service. Is.gd uses slightly fewer characters, for example.

Watch out for…

These pathogens can ruin you’re the Twitter-creature you’ve created! Look out for:

• Naughty words. They make you seem angry, out of control, unprofessional, and like you have a limited vocabulary and no other way to express yourself.
• Abbreviations. Most people understand LOL and OMG, but if you’re using them more than once per tweet, you are trying to squeeze too much in! Another point here … I find that ‘WTF’ (pardon me!) is just as unprofessional  as the spelt-out version.
• An imbalance forming. Check over your profile page regularly and see if you have been favouring one type of Tweet heavily. Bring a bit of balance back into your profile.

Twitter is a great web marketing tool – but even within 140 characters there is a lot of room for wasted opportunities!

Laugh ... but have you heard someone at your organisation say this?

1. Got a complaint – deal with it

If you hear of any complaints from your customers, try your hardest to resolve them to the customer’s satisfaction, without overly compromising your business principles. In saying that, sometimes a measure of compromise will be necessary to keep people happy – you may have to give something away for free that people would usually pay for, for example. Take the angle that you are trying to ‘make up’ for the customer’s inconvenience, and know that this sort of attitude will help your business in the long run.

2. Always ask your customers if they need something else

If someone approached you in store and asked where the milk was, you’d probably take them there, then wait to make sure they found the brand they wanted. The equivalent in internet marketing is not just directing customers to ‘the Products section from the Home page’ … give them a link to exactly what they need. Then ask if they have any questions about it, or the ordering process.

3. Be positive, be genuine

Learn to be positive about your work, your business … and life in general! Greet people with “This rain will be helping the grass grow/farmers/health of the river” instead of saying “Horrible weather we’re having, isn’t it?”. Positivity from the start sets the tone for all your customer’s interactions with your company.

4. Make sure ALL your customer service staff know these principles!

Run customer service refresher courses every so often, preferably with the managers as mock customers so problems can be easily identified. Even if people tend to ‘act’ a little because they know they’re being tested, it will still help them keep the ideals at the front of their mind. And even in an internet marketing context, it is possible to use training tools like mystery shoppers.

It’s a crying shame to see a top Google ranking go to waste through a lack of understanding about customer service. These principles are very simple … but they make a real difference!

1. Answer phones, emails and instant messages

I certainly understand the reasons why some people don’t answer their business phones, emails or live help requests. You’re just too busy, and it can ‘waste’ big chunks of the day communicating with people. However, if you’re at the stage where you are too busy to answer calls and messages, perhaps it’s time to hire someone to do it … or risk never being busy again.

2. Keep your promises

If something isn’t firm, don’t make it into a promise. If you tell a customer that you will definitely have their order manufactured by Friday, make sure that you do. If you aren’t sure whether it will be ready by Friday, use vaguer language. There’s no harm in being uncertain, but there is in breaking promises.

3. Listen to what your customers are saying

In the old days, this simply meant ‘listening’. Funny, that! In the context of internet marketing, though, ‘listening’ means taking on a whole new set of tasks. Set up a Google alert for your business name as well as possible variations, regularly look for your company mentioned in Tweets and on Facebook Pages. If you find dissatisfied customers, try to resolve their concerns.

4. Be helpful for no reason

Apart from the fact that helping people for no reason fills you with the milk of human kindness and gives you a serious case of the fuzzies, it could also boost your business. There may be no immediate reward … but be helpful to enough people and you’ll reap the rewards in reputation and eventually, profits.

Some customers don't get mad ... they get the Dark Side

The angry consumer

We’ve said it in jest before (not that long ago, when we were discussing ‘Why the Internet Sucks’), but it is true. Getting behind a keyboard and a screen allows people’s anger to rise to amazing levels. Someone that has a bad experience at your shop will vent in a much more vicious way if left to stew, and then explode online, than if you’d tried to resolve the issue immediately in-store.

What can the angry consumer do?

Some extreme examples of venting by frustrated consumers include the website BanTarget.org, set up in response to the Salvation Army being banned from collecting donations outside Target Stores a while back. Or how about iPodsDirtySecret.com, a site set up including an actual recorded conversation with an Apple customer service rep over the fact that when an iPod battery died, the only alternative was to replace the entire machine.

Other ways consumers get even

However, there are plenty of ways that consumers can vent about businesses they feel disappointed by, where someone doesn’t have to be annoyed enough to spend $25 on domain name registration and hosting. These include:

• Ranting on their own Facebook pages, and setting up Pages or Groups on Facebook that are anti-your business.
• Publishing negative tweets about your company
• Leaving negative reviews on review sites … including on Google Local’s feature, where if you rank highly, this will be one of the first things prospective customers see.
• File a report about your business with the Consumer Complaint Commission. US businesses can find complaints listed about them with the highly respected Better Business Bureau.
• Leave complaints on complaint sites, set up especially for the purpose.
• Write articles about your company online, create a hub page, Squidoo lens, etc

If you don’t treat your customers well, all that web marketing energy will go down the tube. The age of the internet is the age of accountability for customer service … both fortunately, and unfortunately

1. You’re paying for ads on the Google content network that are not highly targeted

For starters, we are firm believers in the idea that organic SEO has a huge range of benefits over and above pay per click, which is the way the Google Content network is designed. Click on the image above to view it at full size, and tell me if you think the advertisers in question were actively trying to target ‘travel insurance’. If your ads are displayed like this, there is a far lower chance of getting clicks, and of getting conversions from clicks that you pay for.

2. Not using analytics

I love John Wanamaker’s quote – “Half of the money I spend on advertising is completely wasted. I just have no idea which half”. John Wanamaker was the inventor of the price tag and a department store owner himself, and obviously lived in the time before Google Analytics! Ask your SEO company about setting up analytics, if it all seems a bit too much like hard work.

3. Designing, building and writing content for the company, not the customer

You can have the prettiest website and the most grammatically correct content in the world. But if it doesn’t speak in the same language as your customers do, or appeal to them visually, then it is terrible. Why? Because it isn’t achieving its goals.

4. You are paying to get traffic to an old, non-functional or poorly designed site

Without an attractive, usable website at the other end of the click-journey, you’ll be paying for SEO that is driving up not much more than you bounce rate. In fact, many SEO companies can help you with your web design as well. You may not need to switch companies for this little cash leech – just ask about additional services.

Getting to the top of Google is not a license to print money, unfortunately. There are plenty of other SEO-related factors you need to keep an eye on in order to make money in the long term. Talk to an expert SEO strategist if you want any pointers for your own site!

The internet is not impressed at our assessment

1. It’s a black hole for time

We all know exactly how much time the internet can waste. Entire weeks of your life are at stake. Information is fascinating … but not always useful in a broad context.

2. We depend on it … but it isn’t always dependable

Your connection to the internet arises out of a complex array of different factors. Your computer, software, hardware, the phone line, your ISP all collaborate to get you online. If one link breaks … all hell breaks loose!

3. It creates angry, mean people

This phenomenon, I’m sure, arises out of the same mechanism that makes us instantly angrier every time we get behind the tonne or so of metal, glass and plastic that is our car. When there is a keyboard, a screen, and in many cases entire continents between us and other people, human consideration is greatly lessened. Unfortunately.

4. You can’t always trust it

If I had a dollar for every time a Nigerian princess had contacted me, for every time a company had claimed to be able to either enlarge or shrink various parts of my body, and every time I had been told I could make over $40 per hour working at home, I would be a rich, rich lady.

5. Sometimes, we don’t need all that information

One very real effect of the internet on our collective psyche is the way it dispenses us to worry. We now the intimate details of people killed in natural disasters across the world, about exactly how many kidnappings occur every minute, and how often someone is diagnosed with cancer. But SHOULD we?

6. It’s permanent

If you’ve ever bookmarked an awesome link and gone back to find it a week later, only to be informed that the site hasn’t paid their hosting fees, you may dispute this point. But a very real fact is that if you have posted it on the internet, even if it has since been deleted, it may still exist in some form in somebody else’s internet history – or at least, the Google cache.

Our relationship with the internet is definitely more love than frustration … it’s like a marriage. It takes work to have a happy life together, but you know that leaving is not an option!

Create a strategy before you jump into the swarm

1. Should you start social media marketing?

Do your clients use social media? Will they think its repulsive that you’ve started? Ask some questions of your existing customers if you can to try to gauge response. Also, see if any companies competing with you use social media, and what sort of response they have from people – do they have many Facebook fans or much Twitter interaction?

2. Consider the costs

Setting up most social media profiles is free. However, the time taken to administer them, to create content to submit to Digg, to contact people that send you questions through these media, all costs money. Be prepared to have dedicated web-based customer service staff if you push social media hard.

3. Set a personality and tone for your social media experience

Try to make it as close to your company’s real culture as possible, and set some boundaries regarding what gets posted or talked about. Will innocent sexual innuendo be okay … in fact what sorts of content in general will be okay and what will not?

4. Create a skills-based team dedicated to the social media marketing

Choose someone that is personable but professional, and also understands the legal and media implications of their public statements.

5. Set up a tracking system

You’ll need to know how all this effort is translating into profits for your company – decide on a method for tracking this before you start.

Is this how slippery your website is?

1. Find out who you are selling to

So, so many companies say “We sell to whoever needs our products”. This may be true – but every company finds that a large portion of their customers are derived from a certain demographic segment. They might be mostly women, they might be mostly of childbearing age, and they might be mostly located within your physical area. Demographic analysis of your current customers is the first step to getting rid of that slip.

2. Understand your market

Understand their preferences for colour, their design sensibilities, the way they search for information, etc. Then pander to those sensibilities in your website, whether or not they also appeal to you. Everybody is different … and the only people you need to please are the ones that are keeping you in business.

3. Do usability studies

Jakob Nielsen is the grandfather of usability (often the grumpy old man of usability, actually J), and his blog at www.useit.com has lots of good usability info, hints and tips for where you might currently be going wrong. Of course, there is no substitute for an expert eye in this arena … many web marketing specialists work on usability and web design as well as SEO.

4. Build trust on your website

If you don’t have SSL security certificates, a https: connection for your credit card entry page, security certificates for programs like Verified by Visa, etc, there are few customers now that would entrust you with their money.

5. If you have an ecommerce site, link to other products from many places

If consumers can’t quickly find what they want, or don’t see any indications that you might have what they want, they will often click straight off. Use Top Seller widgets, ‘Also Recommended’ sections, and include ‘Customers who purchased this item also bought’ sections, a la Amazon.

Conversion optimisation is a big topic and you can spend years refining it – but without it, every SEO dollar you spend could be wasted.

There's all sorts of Spam sites - don't let your site resemble one!

1. Domain names like .info, .cc, etc.
2. High ratio of ads to content … most quality sites prefer to sell their service or their info, not everybody else’s
3. Spam keywords! Pharmaceuticals, gambling or adult related terms
4. Few direct visits, as opposed to search engine visits
5. Not registered with Google Webmaster Tools or similar services
6. Does not have an SSL security certificate … especially on the credit card payment pages.
7. Not listed in the Yahoo Directory – that link costs a couple of hundred dollars but is standard for most sites that are serious about being found on the net.
8. Contains multiple hyphens in the domain name
9. Do not contain a privacy policy or copyright pages
10. No physical address or phone number listed on the site. If you are taking payments from your customers this is a must – many people will check to see that you’re a ‘real’ company before they even consider handing over their sixteen digits and expiry date.
11. Not registered on Google Local
12. No social media initiatives, like Facebook Pages, Myspace profiles or Youtube channels
13. No links from domains with .mil, edu or .gov extensions. Obviously these are hard to get – but it is just another piece in the distrust puzzle.
14. Domain is registered by a party that owns a large number of domains – people that have a ‘harem’ of domains.
15. Contains malware, viruses, spyware and automated downloads. Of course sometimes legitimate sites get hacked and have viruses inserted too … but you don’t want to be around those either!
16. Misspellings! Everyone slips up now and then – but if you don’t have your site professionally proofed and edited, you definitely run the risk of losing trust from your visitors
17. Don’t usually pay for PPC traffic, or end up close to the bottom of the sponsored results.
18. The content on the site does not require a high reading level, as measured by the Fleisch-Kincaid scale that ‘grades’ text according to who could understand it
19. Contain a large number of snippets of duplicate content
20. Not likely to offer content in the forms of PDFs, PPTs, Word DOCs, etc.

If your site matches many of these characteristics, and especially if you haven’t upgraded your design in quite a few years, you’re likely to be seen as a spammer by visitors, although you might have the best of intentions. Get a web marketing expert to help you clean up the site … and stop letting visitors go to waste!

1. Doorway pages

Google doesn’t like doorway pages. These pages are usually optimised to rank well for a particular keyword, but are ‘hidden’ from the navigation of the main site. Someone would usually enter a doorway page through a search engine result, but if they bookmarked your home page, wouldn’t be able to find it again. You see this often when companies service a sizeable physical area and want to optimise for several locations – “removalists Melbourne”, “removalists Coburg”, “removalists Northcote”, “removalists Brunswick”, for example. If you want to use doorway pages, make sure they’re accessible from the main navigation.

2. Redirect pages

You can redirect pages to other ones legitimately in Google, for example if you choose to change your domain name. However, the pages that come in groups of between 5 and 500, all targeting similar keyword phrases, and contain no content except links to other pages in the family, AND THEN redirect you to a different page when you click from search results, are a Google no-no.

3. Buying links

Google is keeping an index (funny, that) of all the sites that sell links to other sites, and is devaluing the links from those sites. You will end up paying for nothing – and probably getting slapped with a Google-fine, as well.

4. Linking to spam/bad neighborhoods

We’ve talked in a previous post about linking to spam and bad neighborhoods – Google doesn’t like it, and if you don’t keep on top of your checks you may find that previously reputable domains have expired and been bought out by spammers.

5. Code swapping

If you optimise a page for good rankings, and swap the content there once it is ranking well, Google will often penalise you when they crawl that page again.

1. Check Robots.txt

If you have an SEO company looking after your site, they have probably done this already. If you don’t have a consultant already, check this before calling anybody. It’s the website equivalent of calling the TV man to find out why your set won’t turn on, only to have him put the plug in the wall, charge you $100 and leave.

2. Duplicate content

It really sucks that Google penalizes both sites when duplicate content is discovered – because another site could steal your content without your knowledge quite easily. It like when your big brother hits you, and your Mum comes and puts you both in the corner. Big meanie! Regularly check that no other site is using your content. If you find they are, write to the owners and ask them to take it down … but change yours in the meantime.

3. Cloaking

If your pages are set up to deliver a different version to the search engine than to a real user, Google considers it cloaking and will permanently ban you. There are some legit reasons for cloaking – but if Google finds out, they won’t care about the reason. That big red, blue, green and yellow hammer will come down mercilessly.

4. Hidden text

Making your text the same colour as the background was previously thought to be a good way to get more keywords onto your page, without making your actual copy sound unnatural to visitors. Then the search engines figured out the trick, and the party ended.

5. Keyword stuffing

Even if visitors can see it, Google still doesn’t like keyword stuffing. You will certainly NEED to use keywords to help get your page in front of the people that want it – but Google is getting better at semantic interpretations, so you can use variations of your words quite safely, without hurting rankings too much.

Those nefarious site links can really make your rankings hurt...

1. Check out Bing.com

The lord and master of most of our computers, Microsoft, has created an awesome tool for checking whether you’re linking to spam – if you use it with a bit of ingenuity. You can use the ‘linkfromdomain’ command (without the apostrophes) to check whether links that originate in your domain point to spam.

2. Make a list of probable spam terms

Start off with drug names, pharmaceutical misspellings, casino, poker, over 50 life insurance deals, home finance, home equity, 4u, bllogspot, etc. Check out the lists (1 and 2) of words that trigger spam email filters to create a more extensive list.

3. Search for two or three words in conjunction with the linkfromdomain command

So you might type “linkfromdomain:webmarketinngexperts.com.au gambling casino poker” into Bing. Starting off by targeting several words at a time helps cut down the sheer number of pages that might use the term innocently.

4. If you’re concerned, do individual word searches

Alternatively, you can also search for individual terms that are far less likely to ‘innocently’ appear on web pages. Spam filter words like ‘Shemale’ or ‘lesbian’ are good examples.

5. Check out the sites and decide whether you want to keep the link

In many cases, instances of these words will be innocent. In some they will not – and better you find out than Google! Get rid of anything shady looking ASAP, or you could face an uphill battle to get your Google ranking back.

Now that you know your starting point, we’re going to show you how to make that listing prettier, help make sure that those reviews that show up are mostly positive (without cheating), and generally draw more customers through your sliding door. Here’s how to edit your Google Local listing, and what it could do for your business.

1. Go to www.google.com.au/lbc and add a new business

Most of this information is fairly straightforward, however close to the bottom of the listing page (as it stands currently) you’ll have to enter a description and category for your business. These will be critical in driving traffic to your site through Google Local. Make sure your description contains a variety of your keywords (don’t use word order variations, or singular AND plural versions). Choose your category carefully as well – use this list, and search the page with Ctrl+F to find your keywords and their associated category.
The other field you should take note of is the business name – it is likely that Google uses this to help rank you and display your results as well. If your official business name is ‘Making the Cut’, and you are a hairdresser, we advise you to list your business name as ‘Making the Cut Hairdressing’ in Google Local to have the best chance of being found.

2. Enter information

Throughout the rest of the process, enter as much information as possible about your business. Tell people how they can pay, tell them when you are open, tell them everything. Add photos, add videos, add all the additional details you can think of. The internet is there for information, and while some businesses have a competitive aversion to telling others what they do, customers expect it … and appreciate it.

3. Reviews

Check out where your competitors are getting reviews from in Google Local, and put up a physical sign in your shop asking people that had a good experience to post a review of your shop on that site. You will inevitably get some bad reviews as well – don’t worry too much about them. If you have a good business, you will get mostly good reviews.

If you have problems getting listed in Google Local, Web Marketing Experts offers Google Maps Optimisation and SEO services with guaranteed results.

Magic SEO bullet breaks the Google front page barrier

1. Ensure internal links contain anchor text

Your own website is the place you have the most control … use it! Ensure that when you link to another page on your site, it is with relevant, keyworded anchor text.

2. Use your H1 tag

This is a must on all pages! The H1 tag is one of the major ways that Google decides what a page is about – one of the strongest ways to ensure that it matches a page up with a user search.

3. Use your H2 and H3 tags

Same as above. Not using these tags is a massive wasted opportunity.

4. Move the keywords to the front of the title tag

In some sites you will really have to prioritise the pages that you do this activity on … because it is a bit transparent when every one of your page headings starts with ‘Melbourne hotel‘, or ‘hotel in Melbourne’ or ‘Luxury Bangkok hotel’ or ‘Discounts on Bangkok hotels’ that you care more about the search engines than you do about accurately describing content for your readers. A good page structure, created with SEO in mind, is obviously of help here.

5. Bold your keywords

Use the <strong> code to bold at least one instance of the keyword that you are targeting. No point overdoing this one … so it takes very little time.

6. Use hyphens instead of underscores in URLs

Google indexes punctuation, including underscores. It will recognise the words “Bangkok_hotel” within a URL as a single word. However, if you write “Bangkok-hotel” the page will rank for Bangkok, for hotel, and especially for Bangkok hotel.

7. Put alt tags on your photos and images

It doesn’t make a huge difference, but if you don’t add your alt tags, it is just another wasted opportunity. SEO has become such a big game that every one of these little things is absolutely necessary … if you wan to be competitive.

8. Don’t put anything more than three clicks away from the home page

Three degrees of separation is the golden rule for both users and search engines.

Artist's conceptulaization of the Google bot discovering news

Why publish in Google News?

Apart from the whole ‘be part of the billion clicks’ thing, there are very important SEO reasons for getting published in Google News. If your news article is highly relevant to a search, it automatically gets excellent real estate on the Google front page, via the ‘news results for xxyyz’ box. Additionally, if you have a highly trafficked article, you may get to the iGoogle news widget box, and get clicks from everyone that uses this widget on their iGoogle home page.

Getting content indexed

You can just leave your content there to be discovered … but considering the whole point of news is to be fresh, and Google might take up to 30 days to get round to your site again, submitting a Google News sitemap is a much better strategy. There is a WordPress plugin for this purpose, or you can follow the guidelines from Google itself.

Using categories and subfolders

Google uses your own categories and subfolders, as well as the URLs they create and the keywords that naturally occur on your site, to decide what your content is about. You don’t want to keyword stuff (although do use keywords instead of referential phrases like ‘it’ or ‘them’).

If your news content is more of local interest, put it into a ‘State/Region/City’ subfolder on your site to help the dear Google bot.

Use static URLs

Otherwise you’ll destroy your Google ranking everytime it is refreshed. Create a permanent and unique URL for every story, and include ‘articleID=’ in the string to help Google identify it as news.

Put the date into the text

Placing it between the title and the body text helps Google News know the proper date of publication, as well as identifying it as news rather than ordinary HTML.

Don’t break up the text

If you ordinarily have advertisements in the middle of an article, or links to related posts at the bottom of the fold, take them out on your news pages.

And of course, don’t forget Yahoo News – still a significant source of traffic.

1. People that don’t remain signed into a Google account don’t get it … to the same extent

Personalized search gives preference to results that you have visited before, and in order to do this it stores information about your surfing on its database, under your account. If a person doesn’t have a Google account, they don’t get the same level of personalized search – however you will still see results from your home region preferentially displayed, in most cases.

2. Google says … “pws=0″ turns personalization off

If you want to see what the results would look like without the personalization, Google says that you can add pws=0 to the end of your search term, and get an ‘unbiased’ search.

3. Tests say … not true

It seems that including pws=0 doesn’t completely change your search results as much as simply going to a different computer. SEO tests show little difference between a logged-in query and a pws=0 query.

4. The ultimate measure of success will always be the bottom line

All the debate over personalization is really starting to bring home the fact that it is the quality of your information and website that will really help build your bottom dollar. Ironically, this is exactly what Google wants … damn them!

'Running' a Competition

8

1. Collect as much contact information as possible

… without scaring entrants away. It is a rich opportunity to get demographic information that you can use later in web marketing opportunities. Add a couple of demographics questions to a competition entry form, and you have instant extra value.

2. Use your own products or services as the prize where possible

Everybody wants a new iPad or a trip around the world, and these competitions will naturally create a huge following and number of entries. However, when you have to pay retail prices for the prize, the competition becomes decreasingly cost effective. Use your own products where possible.

3. Look for competition partners

You may be able to get some prizes donated if you email around your partners and offer to include their logo, tagline and contact details on the competition form. You’ll still have to donate the major prie if you want YOUR business to get the brand recognition, though!

4. List your competitions on comp sites

There is an entire community of people that play the statistical odds, entering every free competition they can, in the hope of winning prizes. There are also (naturally) websites that collect competitions for people that do this. Make sure your comp gets listed on these sites, such as::

• Loquax.co.uk (UK)
• ThePrizeFinder.com (UK)
• Compaholics (UK)
• CompetitionWinner.com.au (AU)

5. Video marketing to promote the comp

This can be ultra-effective … videos are easy to share on social sites, so lets people share with their friends.

6. Require a link back to your site

This ca be a great way to get backlinks … accept competition entries only from people who provide a link from their site to yours, in a fairly permanent place. The requirement could be reviewing one of your products and providing a link to it, for example.

The Keyword Spy Who Loved Me

1. The manual method

You can ‘View Page Source’ by right clicking anywhere (except on a link) on your competitors web pages, and then clicking Ctrl+F, and typing ‘keyword’. After this you’ll see the keywords listed for that page. Of course, these words might be very different to the ones that are actually drawing people to their site, or those that they rank well for in PPC, for example.

2. Visually

Check out their on-page content, and look for words or phrases that are repeated throughout the text, especially at the beginning. It is likely they are targeting these keywords.

3. Spyfu

This tool not only gives you your competitors keywords, but reveals trails of action that paid off for them, the ad copy that drives the most leads, etc. Of course, it costs money … and is not personalized to your business as ‘real’ SEO is!

4. Ranks.nl

If you are having a hard time visually picking out keywords from on-page copy, you can pop the URL in to ranks.nl and see what it thinks the most important terms on the page are.

Of course, you need to remember that knowing a competitor’s keywords doesn’t necessarily dictate the ones that you will use. Your two businesses might be more different (in consumer’s’ eyes) than you imagine. A good web marketing company can help give you a pro perspective on this.

The limitations of short term memory

Short term memory is also sometimes called working memory. If our brains were like computers (fortunately AND unfortunately, they are not), this would be our RAM. Our short term memory has been observed to be able to hold between 4 and 9 items, depending on the test and the subject. The time duration is highly variable, but averages usually run around 20 seconds. Given the amount of info that we are exposed to on the internet, it makes sense to work with our website visitors’ short term memory limitations as much as possible. So how do you do that?

Working with short term memory

This is actually easier than you might think, and you’ll probably recognise many of the best practice guidelines from other posts we’ve done on usability and web design. So, before you forget what we’re talking about (!), here’s is how you can work within the limits of human short term memory on the web:

• Make sure your pages load quickly: If it takes so long for a page to load that users forget why they clicked it, they’ll just as likely click straight off. Don’t tempt people to look at other tabs while they’re in the middle of the checkout process on your site!
• Change the colour of links that have been visited: This is a site-specific issue, not a browser or computer issue. Every site owner has the responsibility to change the colour of visited links, so users know where they’ve been and feel like they’re running in circles.
• Categorise well: Try to create narrow categories and narrow pages … although not at the expense of maintaining a manageable menu structure.
• Provide a link to the homepage on every page: That way if people forget where they are, there is an emergency link to reset their search.
• Use breadcrumbs: Although, only if appropriate. Not all sites will naturally suit breadcrumbs.
• Offer Live Help and other assistance links within the body of the page: If people have to navigate to the Help section and then back to where they were, chances are that you’ll lose either a purchase or a visitor.

We recommend you check out the rest of our Web Marketing with Neuroscience posts as well … the brain is a fascinating thing, but especially when it could be making you more money .

Google buys Remail

Remail created an email search application for the iPhone … and as soon as Google saw the word ‘search’ in a product that it didn’t own, that credit card in it’s ginormous wallet really started to itch! It has now bought Remail, and seems close to closing a deal with on2.

Real time search now to include MySpace

Previously only Bing included MySpace status updates, and there was some balance to the world. Now Google’s real time search includes MySpace status updates, Facebook updates, tweets and news results.

Google and Yahoo raise doubts over Conroy’s filter

Stephen Conroy’s controversial internet filter, which would attempt to remove content that has been ‘Refused classification’ by the Classification Board, has taken a hit from Google and Yahoo. Both search engines have said that the filters ‘would not effectively protect children’, and noted that it is the chat rooms and message boards that usually feature material relating to child porn … and these are not usually indexed by search engines anyway.

Google looks to bring 1G per second broadband speeds

It’s the way of the future – Google is now working on bringing internet connection speeds of up to 1G per second to thousands of households. Unfortunately, they are currently located only in America.

eBay Exec is new Google VP of Commerce

The hiring of Stephanie Tilenius of eBay as Google’s VP of commerce has raised talk that Google might be upgrading their checkout process or other ecommerce initiatives.

Facebook more important than Google?

People are more often getting product recommendations and referrals from Facebook than Google, according to the San Francisco Chronic. Of course, this will not outstrip demand for general search information on Google, Bing or Yahoo anytime soon.

MS Uses Google’s own platform to take a swipe

Microsoft has recently uploaded a series of videos to Youtube – hosted by Google – attacking Google Docs and Google Apps. The videos suggest that the applications don’t have the security or on-premises flexibility that most businesses need.

Google Buzz - Saving the World?

Google Buzz gets launched to mixed reception

Most gossip journalists concur that Google Buz has been getting buzz in the press for the wrong reasons … the main one being the default privacy settings. In some cases, people feel that their physical safety has been horribly compromised by Google’s Buzz introduction. However, there are some real advantages to Buzz, not the least of which is the opportunity to set up a Google profile and get followed links to websites from a PR10 site.

Electronic Privacy Info Centre complains to FTC

This US based group, concerned over the privacy breaches engendered by Google Buzz, wants the FTC to investigate and consider forcing Google to make Buzz an opt-in feature, rather than opt-out.

Google Books saga comes to an end

In 2005, Google was sued over copyright infringement by a group of authors and publishers, because of the preview feature on Google Books. It seems likely that the lawsuit will be settled in the next week or so, and if it is, Google will be able to create a subscription library for its collection of over 12 million books, sell books direct from its site (bye bye, Amazon!), and display portions of books for free.

Google works on creating real-life Babel fish

Before the Altavista Babelfish search engine (and its AMAZING accuracy … not), it seemed incredible simply that computers could translate between different languages. Now Google is working on creating a more realistic ‘Babel fish’, with Google Goggles. They would use OCR, Optical Character Recognition, to pick up what a text is saying, and then run it through Google Translate, and spit it out in comprehensible form.

Google - not as antiquated as they once were

1. Use hidden text on your site

The suggestion is to colour code your text so that the text is either the same as the background colour, or visually very close. The example given is to use 00FF33 and 00FF66, so that Google will index your keywords on the page but humans can’t see them.

2. Use full stops as links

Put full stops down the bottom of every web page, each one linking to Google, to Yahoo, and to your own site.

3. The ever-increasing non-magical Pagerank

Sorry, this tip is so ridiculous that I have to quote directly from pr10(dot)com:

“This tip is probably the most powerful one on here. Make at least three pages on your site and link them as follows:
Page 1 >>>>>> Page 2
Page 2 >>>>>> Page 3
And this is the kicker
Page 3 >>>>>> Page 1

Google will give points to page 2 from page 1, then to page 3 from page 2, and then – if you link it back to page 1 – it starts all over again. I can’t even count how many points this will end up giving you. Just don’t abuse it too much – or the big sites will complain you are taking too much PR from them.”

4. Use lots of meta keyword tags

Having your meta keyword section stuffed with your keywords may have helped several years ago (and to be fair, the pr10 site is copyright 2002), but nowadays the technique does little to nothing. You won’t get de-listed, but you will have wasted your time.

5. Link to a Google page that contains all the inbound links to your site

This supposed magic trick just doesn’t work! The in vitro data is not supported by in vivo testing. You are supposed to link to pages that link to your sites using “link:www.whatever.net”, thus listing all of the inbound links for that page and pushing up their Pagerank, and therefore your own.

If these tips didn’t seem so much in earnest, I would laugh at them … as they are published on the net, I certainly worry that they’ve irrevocably hurt many people’s SEO rankings.

Life in the fast lane

1. Answer a question on Yahoo Answers

This is one of the biggest and most popular question and answer sites on the net now, and even new questions rank quite well in Google for search terms phrased in the form of a question. Answer a question that you have expertise in, provide a link to a relevant resource on your site, and you’ve just marketed yourself, sir!

2. Create a list

There’s no need for your articles all to be 1000 word rants. Keep your list short and simple, and try to make sure that the resources it offers aren’t available elsewhere on the web in the same context.

3. Link out to someone else, and let them know

I you like a company, a product or a service, link to them from your website (as long as the link is relevant and in context!). This is the equivalent of bringing a batch of muffins over to someone ‘s house … a great pretext for further conversation and friendships. Good karma online can never hurt your SEO rankings!

4. Comment on a blog post that you find thought-provoking

However, only if you can add something to the discussion. Telling the author that he’s created a great post will never encourage people reading the comments to click on your link … adding something useful or insightful to the conversation will.

5. Work on your LinkedIn profile

Especially if you are in B2B operations, your LinkedIn profile is a valuable web marketing tool. Expand your connections, update your resume, join in with Group discussions, etc.

Black and White Hat SEO are opposite sides of the same thing...

1. Hide your text

Black hatters use hidden text for nonsensical keyword stuffing. Legitimate sites can still get the benefit of any keywords that may be located in hidden text, but without cluttering the page itself, using JQuery effects like mouseovers to make text appear, etc. Here is a legitimate example (text in the question marks).

2. Mis-spelled terms

It is a popular black hat technique to try and rank for misspelt versions of popular terms, for example, ‘credtit report’. If you have a common misspelling in your industry, define it somewhere on your page, and let visitors know the correct version.

3. Grow your own farmed links

Create a network of related blogs in house, each focusing on a niche within your company or industry. A single person should be able to manage four or five, still very professionally.

4. Pay for your links

But not in the standard black hat way – donate to charitable organizations or community organizations that have a ‘Sponsors’ page with followed links.

5. Do some brand jacking

Do you have a legitimate tale of disappointment from a corporation? People love to complain, and they love bad news, and they love to hear about how terrible a place is before they do business with them. It is a legitimate purpose – just don’t overdo it, your site will develop a negative ‘aura’!

Get your link popularity with ... a skateboard!

Link building, though, is where some websites truly excel, and build top rankings for themselves. Today we’re looking at some of the sneaky, indirect and very effective ways to build links for a site! There’s no instant reward of seeing your link come up in a blog comment or at the bottom of an article … but a little effort can go a lot further here.

1. Build trust in your site

Do this by minimizing grammar and spelling errors, having an About Us section, allowing customers to contact you via phone as well as email, putting up a Privacy Policy (and noting on email signup forms that you do not sell or rent email lists), and adding payment security accreditations.

It certainly doesn’t get you any links directly … but don’t forget that people’s own site ranking may go down if they link to a ‘bad neighborhood’. Remove all possibility that your site could be seen as such, and you could get a lot more links with no extra ongoing effort.

2. Answer a question

Most of the question forums on the internet don’t provide ‘followed’ links – that is why this is an INDIRECT method of link building. If you answer a question on Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, or Wikianswers exceptionally well, providing a link to relevant resources (that would be your site), there is a good chance that people writing their own blog posts will pick up on it and link to you also.

3. Use Wiki

Add links to Wikipedia pages which link to other pages, which link to your site. If your site got a great review on a blog, try to add that link to a relevant page. The keyword being relevant!

4. Write a review

People are often nervous about buying things online, when they have to hand over the money long before even seeing the packaging of the product, let alone trying it. Reviews are big business on the web, so write an honest and thorough one and it will become a needed (and linked to) resource.

5. Trade a link

BUT! BUT! Only with sites that will send you relevant and qualified traffic. If you have a business partner that offers something complementing your own products and services, write a blog post on them, or find another way to trade links with them. This should obviously not be overused, at the risk of getting a Google penalty.

Recently we’ve been looking at Facebook for web marketing and SEO – specifically at the two main methods for businesses to connect with people on Facebook, through Groups and Pages. We mentioned that from a consumer point of view, the two are much the same; but from a business perspective each offers their own benefits and drawbacks. So today we’re going to toss the coin with you and help you decide … Group or Page? Group or Page?!

The old style of non-virtual group!

To recap:

Just to recap the difference between Groups and Pages (and save you sifting back through the old posts!), a Group:

• Can be created for free
• Are simple and have plenty of viral potential
• Members can ‘invite’ other members
• Have a limit on the number of your members you can blast message at once

And Pages:

• Can also be created for free
• Are more highly customizable than Groups, including applications, Flash and other rich content
• Have no limit on the number of members you can blast message at once
• Are a little more difficult to share
• Are often the ‘official’ version of a product – Facebook has been taking action against Pages that aren’t administered by the official company or group, in response to a joke Barack Obama Page.

Most popular business choice … Pages

Pages are the most popular method of social media marketing on Facebook for businesses. This is because they have several eency weency features that Groups don’t have. These include:

• A shortcut URL, so you can promote the page more easily outside of Facebook
• Allowance for extra applications, Flash etc, as mentioned above
• Visitor statistics can be monitored
• Pages can cerate Events through the Facebook Events function, and invite their fans
• Can be promoted with ads, whereas someone must be logged into Facebook to access a Group

But don’t close the book on Groups yet!

One striking difference which can impact the culture of your social media marektin greatly is simply the language Facebook uses for members of the public to connect with your business on Facebook. Consider that:

• With Groups, people can ‘become members’ and ‘invite friends’
• With Pages, people can only ‘Become fans’

This small linguistic matter can create an entirely different feel for the Page/Group, and your business culture and brand should determine which is best.

That said, the differences are quite minor … and both are great for social media marketing, general internet marketing and SEO!

What are the features of a Facebook Page?

Facebook pages can have inbuilt applications, HTML and Flash in them – they’re a lot purdier than Groups are. It’s not only form, though, Facebook pages have much better functions than Groups – the applications make the most difference.

Pages are displayed a lot more prominently on people’s profiles than Groups are. If you click on a Friend’s ‘Info’ tab for their profile, the Groups are listed in order of joining, as a mess of blue hyperlinked text. Pages are much more spaced out, and they have their own individual little icon … however, the viewer does have to click a link to see any more than the most recent five or six pages joined.

What is the cost of setting up a Page?

Zero, zip, zilch, nothing, nada – there is no cost to set up a Facebook page, at least in terms of putting it on Facebook. However, if you want your page to have the additional functionality of applications or rich content like Flash (and you aren’t a web developer yourself), there is a cost involved in having that set up and troubleshooting done when they inevitably break. Of course, there is also an internal cost in administering the Page – replying to questions in wall posts, posting blogs, notes and reviews, and generally creating enough content to make your Page worthwhile for fans. In this respect, the cost is much like setting up a website – you can get a template for free, but if you want to personalize or add value, you’ll need to factor in some dollars.

Page Title considerations

Can you think of a way to engage your readers at the level of friends, or people with a common interest, rather than as a business? For example, if you manufacture underwear that stays where it is put, your Page could be titled ‘I would rather walk around with a wedgie than fiddle with my underwear in public’, or something similar. If you have an effective unique selling point, you can have a page that engages your potential customers like this!

What are the features of a Facebook Group?

Many of us are familiar with the features of an ordinary profile page on Facebook. A Group page is simply a page where people of similar interests and values can come to discuss things and post related content. When you set up a Facebook Group, you can use the platform for:

• General discussions via the wall (although conversations can get a little messy)
• Post photos related to your topic
• Post videos related to your topic
• Post links to related content across the web (although these are not followed by Google and therefore don’t count toward link popularity)
• Sending news and updates to your Group members

What is the cost of setting up a Group?

As far as Facebook is concerned, there is no cost to set up a Group. However, you will certainly want someone either within your organization, or outsourced, to administer the group. When somebody posts a question about your product or service, the polite thing to do in social media situations is to answer it .

Group Title considerations

People on Facebook often use Groups as a ‘bumper sticker’ for their profile. If you create a group name that is bumper sticker-ish, you instantly increase appeal for these people. Use a bit of humour, and make sure you go into detail about the group’s purpose in its title. Here are a couple of good examples:

• People Who Always Have To Spell Their Names For Other People
• I Flip My Pillow Over to Get To The Cold Side
• Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 70s.
• When I was your age, Pluto was a planet

Do you have a running joke in your company or industry that other people relate to? You can see that the groups that have no direct link to companies or monetization of any sort often do well.

If you get popular…

You’ll have to think about all sorts of different things, like assigning someone to administer the group on a more permanent basis, weeding out spam links in the comments and wall posts, and developing a strategy for marketing with the blast messages.

Redback spider's mating ritual effectively combines all three important elements ... mating, food and danger!

Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I ‘mate’ with it?

The neuroscience: Whenever our brain encounters something new in the world, it tries to determine three things of it. These three things are closely linked to both personal survival and the survival of our species, which is an innate drive:

• Can I eat it?
• Will it eat me?
• Can I mate with it? (alternatively known as ‘Will it mate with me?’)

The web marketing tactic: Where you can, try to incorporate elements of each of the three ‘items’ these questions represent into your web content and marketing for it. If you can relate your product to food, love or danger, your visitors’ brains are wired to instantly pay attention. They will be more likely to read more content, more likely to explore the site further, and more likely to engage with your message than if you have a dry, corporate site. To incorporate food, love and danger into your website, you can do things like:

• 1. Use photos of attractive women or men in your marketing – or even ordinary women or men with suggestive expressions or poses
  2. Use a little lateral thinking to connect pictures of food or people eating with your products or services. Happy people are usually a good illustration for a wide variety of products – juts pop a little food in their mouths!
  3. Use a little lateral thinking to connect pictures of dangerous things with your content
  4. Highlight in your web copy how your products either help you become more attractive, avoid danger, or remain able to feed yourself (usually related to earning or saving money).

Of note: As with all of these neuroscience tips, don’t overdo it. People can see straight through it when you stretch logic to fit one of these characteristics in, and it usually garners more derision than genuine interest.

Now that's fast SEO!

1. Answering Twitter questions

   Set up an alert through any one of the Twitter companion programs for questions with keywords related to your industry. When you see someone ask a question about either your industry, or your brand specifically, answer them! This really makes your customers feel cared for, encourages them to visit, pushes up your Google ranking…

2. Write a case study

   Information from experts is in short supply on the web. Knock out a case study for recent clients of yours, such as a Client offering perfume, and note how you solved problems for them. Provide real, useful information and people will not only visit and link to you, they might even hire you.

3. Create a narrow ‘How-to’ article

   The big, long and in-depth ‘how-to’ articles are more than a ten minute job. However, people want the answers to all sorts of small questions – they don’t always want to have to read through ‘The Ultimate Guide’ to solve a problem.

4. Google Hot Trends

   Use Google Hot Trends to decide what to tweet and blog about
   Of course, it will still have to be related to your industry – but Google Hot Trends shows what the buzz is about, right at this very second. If you can link a news item or issue to your content, the traffic possibilities are enormous.

5. Check your page speed

   Google Webmaster Tools lets you see how fast or slow your site is. And Google has hinted that page speed will become an ever-more important factor in ranking … so make sure you know where you stand.

How healthy is your website's shopping cart?

So how do you get a slice of the pie?! If you have an ecommerce site, today we are looking at 3 big tips to make life easy for your customers, and therefore sell more online.

1. Look at what happens after the click

There aren’t many actions that you should take without first investigating them. When it comes to ecommerce, it is vitally important to see what visitors do after they land on your site.  What is your bounce rate like? What pages do they go to most? What pages do most people exit from? This information forms the building blocks of a successful ecommerce site.

Smart ecommerce sites (and those with a reasonable marketing budget) can also gain plenty of benefit from customized usability testing, eyetracking studies and heat mapping.

2. Add ratings and recommendations … and personalize them

The easiest way to understand this tip is to think of how Amazon interacts with you. If you have an ecommerce site of your own, but no experience with Amazon, go check it out now! While there are some complaints about their site, they generally represent the embodiment of best practices in ecommerce.

Amazon provides personalized recommendations for new products based on what a user has viewed before, and what they have bought before. eBay now does the same.

You can also provide ratings from other users based on a person’s behavior on your site – don’t wait for them to click through to a product page to find out that other people love a product.

3. Add a Live Help function

Most of the problems that people encounter with ecommerce sites can be overcome, or at least mitigated, by offering a Live Help service. When something happens that a consumer isn’t expecting, they don’t have to go searching for their product all over again at a different site. That is actually a lot of work – though it is possible. Live Help keeps customers on-site, even if:

• There isn’t enough product information on a description page
• An error occurs during checkouot
• Return policy is not clearlt stated
• People need to enquire about shipping
• The product is expensive

The grossest, but certainly the best, web marketing tool

Use scarcity as a selling point

The neuroscience: Humans are a social creature, and we tend to look for both acceptance and status among our peers. If we believe that a lot of other people have (or want) a particular product or service, we will also want it. Having the same thing as everyone else helps build our acceptance; having something everyone else wants confers status.

The web marketing tactic: So, if you truly only have a limited number of items, or can honestly only provide a service for a limited time, let people know that. You might do this by:

1. Modifying your ecommerce software to show the number of items left in stock of a particular product
2. Modifying your ecommerce software to show how many of a particular item have been sold in the recent past
3. Puttingup a widget on your site that shows people the most popular items, and how many there are left
4. Creating a special promotion or sale, but only holding it for a limited time. DON’T extend it past the indicated date. This is like telling your two-year old that they will get a time-out for touching the television … and when they touch the television a minute later, simply telling them that they’ll get a time-out again. You are teaching people not to believe what you say.
5. Holding a special limited time event, such as an exclusive customer party, a product celebration, a promotion to hold inconjunction with a trade show, etc.

Of note: This usually only works when there really is a limited amount of something! For example, we’ve all seen those email marketing letters and landing pages that urge us to ‘Sign Up Now – This Offer Expires in Thirty Days’ … without mentioning what thirty day time period the offer covers. We know that people say this just to get our attention, and when this occurs, it breeds distrust.

The trick is to let your customers know when there REALLY is a limited time offer … not to invent time limits to try and increase signups.

Google gets two thirds of search traffic

66% of searches conducted globally during December 2009 were conducted on Google. This percentage also represents a big real-number increase, because 46% more searches were conducted worldwide in December 09 compared to December 08. December is a traditionally very busy time for many retail sites who see huge spikes in traffic for seasonal keywords, such as christmas hampers, gourmet food items and gifts in Australia.

You may have heard stats indicating that Google has a much bigger share of search traffic than that – and we have as well. It is important to remember that these figures are usually US or Western-world based. For example, there are a huge number of Asian sites that are very popular, but barely known in the West.

Facebook grows US users and time spent

Facebook’s US audience grew to 109,710,000 odd during November 2009, according to stats released in January. The average user spent around 6 hours and ten minutes on the site in that month.

65 and over much more web savvy

The internet is traditionally seen as the domain of the young, but that has been steadily changing over the past few years. Statistics show that the number of internet users in the 65+ age bracket has increased by more than 55% between November 2004 and November 2009. The top destinations they are visiting are Google Search, Windows Media Player, Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Search (in order of popularity)

Brain cells - the only real marketing tools!

Put the most important thing to your business first

The neuroscience:

In our minds, what comes first is unconsciously regarded as the best. This may be driven by our largely hierarchical society, which has retained that basic structure since the time of our furry ancestors. Or it may not. However this quirk came to be, it is a very real phenomenon in our minds. The number one result in Google gets a whopping 56% of the clicks, according to one study – not the 10% you would expect if all the results on the page have roughly equally valuable content. In many cases content is equal – but our perception of value is different.

The web marketing tactic:

Whenever you have several items on a page, and one is more important to you than the others, put it first. For example:

1. If you have a list of products, and one is either more likely to build customer loyalty, more likely to get click throughs, or nets you a higher margin, put it first
2. If you have one product on site that converts better than all the others, put it first in the list
3. If you have one category of products on site that is better fleshed out and converts better than the others, put it first in your menu navigation.
4. If you have one piece of evidence for your system that is particularly compelling, put it first in your writeup
5. If you have a blog post that consistently gets positive feedback or that contains comprehensive and well-research info, put it first in your list of ‘Popular Posts’. Put the ‘Popular Posts’ widget or list near the top of the page for extra effect.

Of note: If you have a not-so-good product or blog post in ‘first’ position on your site, and visitors go to it expecting to get an optimal example of what your business is like, you are doing your business a major disservice. Your visitors may leave and never come back, believing that the lower quality item is the best you have to offer.

A professional SEO Company like us, can improve content quality and top rankings to ensure you get more traffic and enquiries.

Links=PageRank

Well, when the website is Google and you are trying to rank highly in it, it certainly does matter. Today we run through the basics of Pagerank – who the heck it is, and what it’s good for .

What is Pagerank?

PageRank can actually be explained quite simply – it is a measure of all of the inbound links coming to your website or blog. Google figures that the greater the number of other sites that are linking to yours, the more people must feel that your website has something worthy on it.

Every link is sort of like a ‘vote’ for your site – saying that you have something worthwhile related to your topic. This judgement of worth is something that Google’s computers simply cannot do … as powerful as they are. So they use links to create PageRank, and PageRank is part of what goes into your search engine ranking results.

How is PageRank Calculated?

Here is the formula for calculating PageRank that was published when the concept was first launched … not that too many people bother with using it! It is likely that the formula has now changed, and is as top secret as the 11 famous herbs and spices.

Nevertheless, this is a good approximation:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

Notes: t1 … tn are pages linking to your site. C is your site. D is a damping factor, usually 0.85, which is why is is so hard to get to PR10!

Increasing your PageRank

The way to increase your PageRank is to keep up with your link building activities to get plejnty of inbound links, and to ensure that you don’t link out to sites that have a PageRank of less than 1. It is possible that Google has penalized them, and may also penalize you for promoting them.

A word of warning…

If you are looking for serous advice on increasing your PageRank, go to a web marketing expert … not a site called www.pr10.com (link deliberately omitted!). All of the techniques listed are black hat, though there is no indication that it is as such. There is also no indication that the text is sarcastic. We hope it hasn’t caught out too many people!

Brain cells - great web marketing tools

Tip of the day: User ratings and reviews

The neuroscience: People are social creatures. It is how we have evolved, and one of the most prominent reasons that we have come to dominate the planet – our ability and drive to cooperate. That drive to fit in, to cooperate rather than confront other humans, can be stimulated by showing your visitors that there is a community that has been built around your product. If you can show other users that there are people that trust your product and believe in its benefits, you are much more likely to convince them.

The web marketing & SEO tactic: There are several ways to implement this strategy on your website.

1. Enable ratings on your products
2. Enable reviews on your products
3. Make sure that people visiting the site, as well as people actually leaving reviews, know that reviews aren’t changed by you, no matter what they say. Writing something like “You can instantly publish your review – we do not moderate comments on our products”.
4. Add demographic information to ratings and reviews (as an optional extra). People might relate more strongly to a review if they see that the reviewer has similar demographics – age, location, family status, etc – to themselves.
5. Enable comments on your blog and respond to commenters
6. Add an ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’ button for comments on your site
7. Build a forum that can be an additional resource for site visitors

Ratings and reviews can help new buyers, as well as contributing to their sense of community and social validation. They can also help them rationalize purchasing something they haven’t seen in person – “It worked fine for them, it will probably work fine for me”.

Of note: Testimonials don’t really work for this purpose! Every savvy web user knows that they are selected, edited and wouldn’t be on the site if they weren’t positive. Don’t remove bad reviews, simply post a public response to them offering to clear up the problem.

Not many people are doing it

Video still sets you apart from the crowd. While Youtube is a huge website, and people are quite used to viewing online videos, if you’re in a smaller niche then utilizing video where appropriate on your site will still make you seem like an industry leader, not a follower.

Not every one likes video … not everyone likes text

This seems like an obvious point, but it leads us to a best practice that almost all sites miss. If people don’t have time to be led through a video on your topic, they’ll go elsewhere. On the other hand, if they’re looking for information they don’t have to process too much, they’ll look specifically for videos, and might miss your text-based info.

The point is this: always have a text based version of the info in your video … and if possible, always make a video version of your flagship content pieces.

Google is not good at handling video yet

Video marketing is still more in the realms of building customer engagement and word-of-mouth internet marketing than it is an SEO tactic. Tagging helps, but the best practice is to create a text-based version of your video for both the consumers, and the search engines.

You won’t always be able to ‘do’ video

Video is not good for all info, or all topics. Content that doesn’t suit the video format (ie, there is little opportunity to ADD to the content with visuals) should be left as text!

Youtube might not always be your best friend

Youtube is an independent company, serving their own and their visitors interests, not yours. There are thousands of people worldwide who have had their videos removed for violateing terms and conditions without even knowing they had done anything wrong. Hosting your own video can be expensive, but is sometimes worth it.

Web Marketing Experts is Australia’s leading SEO Company – we can help you with all video and internet marketing services.

1. Create and maintain a private forum

This can be a pretty big earner for your business if you have a way to provide real value to your customers! If you sell a product that often requires ongoing support or training, why not offer this at a fraction of the cost of phone support, via an online method? Someone will have to pay attention to the message boards, but people LOVE getting customized answers from experts.

2. Host a Job Board

Again, this depends on the type of content you have on site for suitability. If you are a marketing-copy-oriented site, it will seem out of place. If you have created a significant information resource, built yourself up as an expert and created a small community around your site, it will work perfectly. The easiest way to monetise is to charge a tiny fee for both advertisers and applicants.

3. Run a paid survey

Again, only for the info/expert/community sites. There are quite a few sites that will pay you to run polls on your own website – market research is big business. Just don’t overdo this one, or you’ll scare  visitors away.

4. Sell an ebook on site

This leverages all that knowledge, and all that expert status that your site has built up. Having an ebook written usually doesn’t cost very much – provide a few resources that only you have access to, and give information via phone interview to the author to make sure that content is exclusive.

What many traditional businesses don’t realize is that there are plenty of way to combine the two approaches to making money online – we explore 4 of those today. Of note, we are only looking at methods that detract little from the actual corporate identity of a site.

1. Hosting banner advertising

The suitability of this strategy depends on the setup of your site. If you have substantial information sections, then it makes sense to offer links to other sites that people might find useful. If your site is purely marketing copy, it makes less sense to dilute your message. Still, consider that a site that hosts a banner ad with a $1CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and gets 100,000 page views a month will generate $100 monthly …pretty decent!

2. Affiliate marketing

Find a business that is complementary to your own,, and also has an affiliate program. Mention them and link to them in your own copy (only where appropriate), and you have the potential to be earning commissions from your website, without changing the perceived quality.

3. Sponsored reviews

If you are able to, or already have, built up some kudos in your industry community, people may ask you to do paid reviews – either of their site, a book, a product, etc. If they don’t ask, send out a letter to let them know! Alternatively, use sites like Pay Per Post.

4. Host Premium Content

As a business, you have lots and lots of expert knowledge. Given the quality of most content on the net (!), anything that comes from the expert’s mouth is highly regarded! Have some content on your site as free, and some paid. Offer a range of payment options – subscription, per-per-article, etc.

Using Black Hat Techniques

You don’t have to be an evil Google manipulating monster to fall for what seems like an easier way to get search engine rankings … and which might anger the giant of web search! A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when DIY-ers use what looks like an easy way out. These quick-fixes are almost always considered black hat, and will get your site banned or penalized in Google when caught.

Meaningless Meta Tags

Many, many people that write their own meta tags don’t realize that this is the only piece of text that search engines display alongside your main website title. It should contain your keywords – if only to tell searchers that the page is relevant to what they were looking for.

Correlating Content

Aside from on-page SEO, including your keyphrases in your site copy helps reassure visitors they have come to the right place, and helps tone down bounce rates (percentage of visitors that leave within a few seconds).

Ignoring the Power of the Address

Your URL is one of the most powerful weapons in your SEO arsenal – use it! You should spend at least as much time brainstorming and refining your URL ideas as you do on your entire site content.

Consider … Google’s preferences

Considering that the reason your blog exists is as an SEO tool for your website, and you can see why somebody’s idea of perfection other than yours and your customers star to creep in. It seems that pages under around 250 words, and over about 1000 words, aren’t ranked as highly in Google. If you want people to come to your site through natural search, keep this in mind.

How often will you be posting?

If you want to gain a regular readership, your readers need to feel that you care about the blog. This is one of the major reasons (alongside SEO) that you should post regularly. However, if you only put up a 250 word post every fortnight, your readers don’t get the impression that you care about the blog. Also, there is less good content for them to pore over! If you will be posting infrequently, make your posts longer. If you are posting daily or multiple times daily, make them shorter.

Note on short posts and frequency

Some people believe that the enormous amount of regularly updated content is what has allowed sites like Engadget and Gizmodo to get to the top of the blog list and stay there. However, your readers and their preferences should really be in the forefront of your mind.

Be comprehensive

Blog posts that skim the surface of a topic are usually of little value to readers – they are a dime a dozen on the net. If you want to write shorter posts, choose ‘narrower’ topics, which you can cover comprehensively in fewer words.

1. Think about vertical search terms to use

In your keyword research brainstorming session, you probably whittled your list down to fifteen or twenty general terms that describe your entire business (for example, bathroom fittings, public restroom furnishings, etc). However, there are a number of ‘vertical’ searches that are common within every industry, that you can often capitalize on. These can be broken down into categories:

• Local terms (so add your city, your state, or your country to one of your general keyphrases. If your keyphrase is ‘search engine optimisation’, your vertical alternatives could be ‘search engine optimisation Melbourne’, ‘search engine optimisation Victoria’, or ‘search engine optimisation Australia’
• Products that you stock, including brand names and even model numbers, in some cases

2. How does querent intent relate to each keyword?

What phase of the decision-making process is a person searching for a particular term likely to be in? What phase of the decision-making process does that part of your site serve? You need to think about this to determine how much return you’ll get from particular keywords.

3. Check out the PPC data, even for your organic search terms

Even if you aren’t interested in doing PPC advertising at this stage of your SEO campaign, it is always helpful to know which keywords show the heaviest competition in the PPC arena. These trends certainly cross over into natural search.

4. Check out the related searches

Most major search engines have their own version of the related searches tool. If you just want a few ideas, check out Google’s. Simply type your term into the search box, click the ‘Show Options’ link up the top, and then hit ‘Related Searches’ down the page a bit.

Keyword Research - not a precise science

1. Relative Search Volume

When you first startedt on the process of determining the keyphrases that will best serve your SEO and web marketing needs, you probably got out a big piece of paper, called everyone into the same room, put on the coffee and fluffed up the sofa cushions, and said ‘Troops – Brainstorm!’. You’ll have a heap of different phrases relating to your business – the nest step is to determine which of these consumers are searching for the most. The top phrases are not necessarily the ideal ones to go for if they don’t represent your business as well as others – but you need the information.

So, check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, the MSN Keyword Research Tool, and Wordtracker.

2. Keywords in season

Check when your keywords are in season. This won’t be the only deciding factor on whether you should use a particular word for your web marketing, but it will help guide which ones are more important. For example, if the term with the highest average yearly volume shows an enormous peak in November and December, but is flat the rest of the year (and you don’t like competing at Christmas time!), it won’t be as high on the list.

3. Examine the competition

Look at the domains that rank in the top five spots for the terms you are targeting – perhaps for your top five keywords. Check out their Pagerank, and number of inbound links.

4. Think about emerging trends

Knowing the lexicon of current events and trends is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your site. Find out exactly what people are talking about with site-specific tools like Google News Trends, Blogscape and Twist for Trends in Twitter. This may add to your brainstorming list, or it might indicate which keywords would make your SEO campaign more likely to succeed.

The all important word order

Go by the numbers

The first (but certainly not the only) decision making tool you can use here is Google’s Keyword Traffic Estimator Tool, available at https://adwords.google.com.au/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox .  Type in each of your alternate phrases, with quote marks around each, to tell the engine you want data for an exact match. List how many searches are performed for a certain time period for each phrase … but don’t just decide to use the most popular one!

Popular first

You will be making the highest search volume phrase the first priority – but realize that you’ll also be using the alternatives later on. Yes, the top search volume phrase will have the most competition. More importantly, though, it represents the language and word order your consumers and potential site visitors think in.

URL Tips

There will often be one phrase that sticks out as not making much sense – you can tell it will be difficult to incorporate in the copy, probably because people are simply being a bit lazy about typing the phrase in! Use this phrase in the URL – that way you can still optimize for it without your copy sounding odd.

On page copy

Focus on the main, highest traffic keyphrase in your site copy. Try to use it 3 or 4 times in your body copy for relevant pages only … and remember to keep it natural!

Anchor text

Then, use your two or three alternative word order keyphrase in your link building campaigns. This should give you a good mix of the alternative keyphrases, weighted in favor of the one which will sound most natural to your readers being in the site copy, and help with your mix of internet marketing strategies.

Marketing styles - different for every business, but all follow the same rules!

Time, time, time – see what’s become of me

One of the most relevant laws in an SEO context is number 11 – “Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time”. This is absolutely true in SEO – there is no business, anywhere in the world, that can launch a website one day, and be first on Google the next. Not only is the phenomenon not overnight, it often takes much longer than you expect. However, it is an ongoing practice with ongoing, very real rewards.

Negative thinking

This highly counter-intuitive rule is practiced almost nowhere on the web, and almost nowhere in traditional marketing – the rule states that ” When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive”. The examples given are Avis, which ran a successful marketing campaign after admitting they were the number 2 car rental brand; Volkswagen, which admitted the Beetle was ugly; and Listerine, who admitted the mouthwash tastes like petrol. The fact is, it takes courage, honesty and confidence in your product to admit something negative about your brand … and those are aspects everybody wants to have in companies they partner with. Make use of it in your website copywriting, your PPC ads, your social media marketing, and any communication your have with your customers.

Success, arrogance, and failure

The 18^th law of marketing is that ” Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure”. In an SEO context, we see this most often when companies believe that a number one Google position is absolute. They get to #1 … and then believe they can stop spending on SEO. If you want to remain successful, you have to keep trying to be successful!

Owning a Word

Laws 5 and 6, which state respectively that “The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind”, and “Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind”. These realte to the entire discipline of SEO … only you have to own a word in Google’s mind, but not necessarily in your prospects. Nice parallel … but we did know that anyway!

Strategy Determination

Ries and Trout observe in the seventh law that the strategy you should use depends on what rung you occupy on the ladder. The ladder is generally understood to mean the hierarchy of products within a category that exist in a consumer’s mind … and the main difference is what you do when you are number one, versus number 2, 3, 4 or lower. This gets a little complicated when you start thinking about details though – a web marketing firm will be an essential partner for implementing this one!

Follow the leader?

The ninth law comes next in our partial review of Ries and Trout’s genius – and it states that if you are shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader. That is, if you are competing with a very strong brand in your category, and can realistically expect to get to the number 2 spot on the strength of your company and product … you should do the opposite of what the #1 company does. People want an alternative, not an imitator … and there are plenty of ways to give yourself that label through your web marketing activities.

The ‘First’ Laws

Ironically, the first laws in the book are all about ‘firstness’. Laws 1 through 3 are:

1. It is better to be first than it is to be better.
2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

In an SEO and web marketing context, one of the most important of this set is number 3 – it is better to be first in the mind than first in the marketplace. As concrete business advice, you can take this to mean “If your competitors are lagging behind in their SEO efforts, you’d better hop on your horse quick to take advantage of that!”. You can have competitors, not be the first in your niche and still succeed – if you see that little opening.

And if you take it a little more literally, you could say that it is better to be first (in the Google rankings) than it is to be better … and you’d have a highly profitable view of business on the web!

Battle of Perceptions

The law we are talking about here, number 4, is : Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.

In the real world, it refers to the importance of brand-building. You should have a brand that is both recognizable and respected. In web marketing this is less important, because consumers are more apt to research and choose, than blindly brand-follow.

Yet, you should always focus on maintaining good perceptions of your business, as well as maintaining good products. If your website looks a little shonky, or you link out to bad neighborhoods, or your website is listed in dodgy directories, you lose in the battle of perceptions. SEO specialists can help determine exactly how those perceptions are best ‘massaged’.

By the way, we’ll be looking at more or less all of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing in an SEO context over the coming weeks … so stay tuned!

A clear visual hierarchy

Step 1: Make use of visual hierarchy rules

Things that are more important on your page should be made obvious with a combination of the following web design aspects:

• Being larger
• Being bolder
• Being more colourful
• Being closer to the top of the page
• Being surrounded by more white space

Step 2: Be conventional

This isn’t business or general marketing advice, but it makes good sense for web design. Take advantage of conventions like putting a search box in the top right of the page, naming certain parts of your site ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact’, etc. This makes you effortless to understand.

Step 3: Segment your pages

If you run Adsense, it’s tempting to make the ads look like content in order to get people to click on them. Design-wise, it isn’t optimal … it simply makes the site harder to understand, and likely to have a higher bounce rate.

Step 4: Link appearance

Make it obvious when something is clickable, either by making it blue and underlining it, or creating 3D effects on it. At the very least, put a single underline on your links. As a side note, you should always make both the picture and text related to a link clickable. If your users can’t figure out how to get round their site, they’ll click off … wasting all that precious web marketing time!

WordPress SEO Pack screenshot

In the red corner, weighing in at 14 pounds … WordPress plugin!

The name might be accurate in a WordPress setting (for example, this plugin may have consolidated several other WordPress plugins into a single one), but calling it an all-in-one SEO pack, even in light of all the other DIY tools there are available out there, is a big leap! The plugin simply gives you a platform to enter your title, meta description and meta keywords. It’s useful for bloggers without HTML knowledge or editors, but is a tiny tool in reality.

Here’s what you can get other automated tools for in the web marketing field that the WordPress plugin doesn’t do:

• Page index checker
• Search engine rankings report
• Link popularity checkers
• Tools for suggesting keywords (although the quality is invariably dubious!)

In the blue corner, weighing in at several hundred pounds combined … your SEO team!

It’s easy to see which is going to win in this match up. In fact, I’m no longer sure if it was fair to compare them in the first place … sorry about that . When it comes to the benefit of humans over automated tools, there’s just no fight. Instant knockout … go to the pub for the rest of the night! Humans can:

• Determine keywords that are truly relevant to your business
• Build links that are relevant as well as ones that check the boxes (Pagerank, followed, etc)
• Actually write content! This is a big part of SEO, unfortunately the WordPress plugin can’t do this for you.
• Test and assess what’s working in a campaign
• Too many other things to list … get in touch with an SEO specialist!

Truth #1: People scan, they don’t read

Unfortunately, most visitors to your site will read about 10% of the copy that is displayed to them carefully. They know that not everything will be important to them, so they don’t bother. Therefore, make it easy to scan for, and find, the same phrases on the page that people likely searched for to get to your site. Make your keywords prominent, in other words.

Truth #2: People don’t check all the options, they take the first good one

All this means is that if you have one important action that you want people to take on a page (‘Submit’, ‘Buy’, etc), make it the most obvious! Make anything that might help them achieve YOUR website goal in another way obvious also … things like navigation, related products, etc. This way your website can start paying you back, and investing in future internet marketing activities.

Truth #3: We LOVE trial and error

People never figure things out, and they rarely consult the help manual. They most often simply try things until something works. In order to ensure they can do what you want them to with a minimum of errors, get some expert help with website design and usability. And then forge ahead with your SEO campaigns with confidence that your visitors will be worthwhile!

Another of the most important rules of owning a website is that if you make people think, they will avoid coming back to you. “Argh, my prefrontal cortex!”, they’ll subconsciously scream . And in a jiffy, there goes all of the link building, content optimizing SEO effort you’ve put in to get your site to number one in Google in order to get clicks.

Riddip - I didn't want to think!

So, today we are looking at the common website design mistakes that make people think too much, and how you can get around … thereby staying focused on the REAL goal of your internet marketing, which is not to get visitors, but to use visitors to make money.

Thought-Inducer 1: Obscure Titles

When you design your website, use words that aim at the lowest common denominator. Try to let go of the urge to ‘corporatise’ your language. So:

• If you have a page full of jobs, put the word ‘Jobs’ on the button, not ‘Employment Opportunities’
• If you are selling movies on a page, use the word ‘Movies’ on the linking button or navigation, not ‘Digital Video Discs’

You get the idea! There is an example for every industry. Don’t be afraid of sounding  ‘dumb’ – remember, people don’t care about you and your vocabulary, they care about themselves!

Thought Inducer 2: Link appearance

You need to make it obvious where you want a person to click on your page. The easiest way to call attention to a link is by using a coloured, beveled, shadowed button. Using a simple coloured square makes it look like a graphic, and using text devalues the importance of the link. Worst of all is not changing the color of your links from the ordinary text color … waaaay too much work!

Thought Inducer 3: Marketing jargon in links

Some common examples of this understandable (but deadly!) usability mistake include:

• ‘Quick Search’ instead of ‘Search’
• ‘Product Types’ instead of ‘Categories’
• ‘Assistance’ instead of ‘Help’

Use the same words everybody else does for standard pages – trying to set yourself apart here often drives your visitors away, and wastes all of those web marketing dollars!.

SERP Factor 1: Keyword usage and surrounding content

I may have snuck an extra one in there . While some people advocate writing without giving any thought to keywords (to make it as natural as possible), there is little value in determining your keywords if you don’t use them. What has happened is that you need far fewer instances of a term, and much more careful placement, to get the same web marketing results. Keywords should be used in title tags, headers, body copy, alt tags, and also in bold.

SERP Factor 2: Link popularity

Link juice - yum!

This is the focus of much web marketing activity – building links to your site, either from inside or outside it. It can be achieved through contextual linking within the site, and outside link building activities like article marketing, press release distribution, etc.

SERP Factor 3: Anchor text

The text that somebody uses as an anchor to indicate what people will get if they click through a link to your site is very important to Google. Try to ensure that links pointing to your site utilise keywords relevant to the landing page for that link.

SERP Factor 4: Domain authority

There are several factors that affect domain authority or trust:

• How long the domain has been indexed by Google
• The trust of sites that you link out to
• The number of people searching for the site and visiting it
• Stability in growth

Domain authority is the least easy factor to manipulate – you simply have to wait, build traffic, make sure your outgoing links are sound, and hope!

There are plenty of other factors, as well as ‘factors within factors’ to consider in your internet marketing journey – an expert is best to round them up for you.

We’ll be looking at four major factors that Google uses to rank pages for a particular search query:

• Keyword usage on site, including keyword density, positioning, relative appearance next to related words, etc.
• Anchor text used in external links
• Link popularity – how many links of what level of ‘authority’ you have linking to your site
• Trust and authority of the domain hosting the page

2004 – Back in Aught-Four!

• Trust and authority: Only had a very slight impact on SEO rankings. Having a .gov or .edu domain probably would have helped relatively little in rankings.
• Keyword usage: Was of moderate importance in determining rankings
• Anchor text: Was very important in determining SERPs
• Link popularity: Was seen as the dominant force in determining the SERP

2007 – Back in Aught-Seven!

• Trust and authority: Was moving up in importance, we could now see a moderate impact
• Keyword usage: Again, of moderate importance
• Link popularity: Moderate importance – the top three factors had relatively equal weight
• Anchor text: However, was seen as immensely important by Google

2009 – Back to the Not So Distant Past

• Trust and authority: Our recent SEO projects have shown much better results for host domains with good trust and authority in Google’s eyes – it seems this is now of quite dominant importance.
• Keyword usage: Still has a moderate impact on internet marketing activities
• Anchor text: Still important, but not so much as it was a few years ago
• Link popularity: Currently this has the least effect on over all ranking of the four major factors.

This is all very interesting to note – but an important point to remember is that you shouldn’t neglect to use keywords in your achor text just because Google doesn’t care about it right now … those links will still be there in a couple of years when Google may have changed its mind. For the same reason, there’s still no excuse for neglecting on-site optimization or working on building link popularity as an internet marketing tactic.

First SEO check: Is your site still indexed?

That is, when you do a search in Google for site:www.yourbusinesswebsite.com.au, do you still see pages from your site?

If you don’t: Your site is probably banned from Google (unless it is too new to have been indexed yet). To get banned, you need to do something really awful … your mistake will probably be easy for an internet marketing specialist to identify. Get help, and file a re-inclusion request.

If you do: See below.

Second SEO check: Does your site still show up in results when you search for your domain name, or your business name within “parentheses”?

If you don’t: There may be issues with the validity of some of your links, or there may be some issues with your content that are viewed by Google as on-site spam. If you haven’t updated your site in a while, it is highly likely that SEO techniques that were acceptable back when they were implemented on your domain are now seen as black hat. Keyword stuffing is a good example, or you may have links from a site that has been found to be engaging in black hat internet marketing techniques.

If you do: See below.

Third SEO check: Do you still rank for any reasonably unique phrases within your title tags, in the top 10-20 results?

If you don’t: It may just be that links that previously held lots of weight in your link popularity equation have been devalued, for one reason or another.  Or there may have been some well-marketed competitor sites developed in your niche.

If you do: There’s no problem – you may have just noticed a drop in rankings. Get your internet marketing experts onto the case!

The Long tail of SEO

What is a long tail keyphrase?

In broad, overall Google terms, a long tail keyphrase is understood as any that falls outside the top 100,000 most popular searches that are made in a day, a week, or a month. Usually to people trying to determine their keyphrases, or internet marketing specialists doing so for clients, it means that the little tail of letters heading across the screen is longer.

Long tail keyphrases are much more useful in web marketing than shorter ones. Shorter search terms get a high volume of searches, but there is heavy competition, especially for large sites. You are much more likely to get good web marketing results, and therefore traffic, if you target more specialized terms.

How to help define your long tail keyphrases for best SEO results

Generally, long tail keywords consist of three or more words. You are probably used to thinking about your business in broad terms, trying to explain it to people who understand little about what you do. To define your long tail keyphrases, either you or your SEO specialist will have to get much more personal with your business!

Here are some quick ways to start defining your long tail keyphrases for SEO:

• Add your location to one of your terms, especially if you are the only business in your niche in that area. For example, you might use ‘internet marketing Melbourne‘, rather than ‘internet marketing’.
• Dust off your Unique Selling Point and pair it up with a plain description of your services. For example, ‘offset printing services’
• Use the names of your popular products or services, even if they are much more specific than your overall business. For example, ‘full colour brochure printing’ is a good choice, though your business might do all sorts of printing.

Does size matter? The obvious differences

There are several obvious differences between big business sites and small business sites. These contrasts can be seen in all sorts of business activities, and are also prominent in SEO:

• Bigger companies often have bigger marketing budgets (meaning that paid search can be a good place to start building a visitor base).
• The value of the pre-existing branding in a digital world is immense. Even if no search engine optimization has been done on the site, it likely has plenty of trust with Google already.
• Big business usually means big everything; the website itself can be quite large and difficult to manage.

The Technical Differences in SEO for Big Sites

• The advent of Google personalized search means that if a person has visited a site before, it is pushed up the rankings for its keyphrases. This is a natural advantage for large corporations.
• On-page SEO for large corporate sites generally accounts for about 80% of the search engine ranking. For smaller sites, it can be as little as 20%.
• Changes to existing pages on a large corporate site can have a major impact on your exposure on search engines, and your traffic. Make changes slowly, and have your SEO company check on the impact on the changes.
• On-site content is a large part of the equation, but changing it may incur lower SERPs.
• Site structure changes can incur similar penalties

What can small businesses learn about SEO from the large ones?

There are a couple of guidelines you can use for getting the benefit of big company web marketing (although perhaps, without the budget!), even for smaller businesses.

• Establish your website domain name as soon as possible, to gain more Google trust.
• Spread content onto a larger number of pages (within the bounds of reason!), and do plenty of internal linking.
• Make minor changes to your site and then test the effects, rather than changing everything at once.

Remember, even the largest business giant was once a tiny baby … just the zygote of an idea in its founder’s brain! Internet marketing is a vital step in that road from idea to giant, for modern businesses.

What is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Basically, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI from hereon) is a mathematical way for Google to determine the relationships between words and phrases, based on their proximity, the number of times they occur together, etc. It’s knowledge base for creating an understanding of these relationships is the entire web. The easiest way to understand it is by example: If your company site sells car parts, you would expect to find the terms ‘radiator’, ‘engine’, ‘car’, ‘suspension’, etc, scattered throughout your site. Google analyses the number of times a word occurs with another word in order to determine which pages are more relevant to a search query … even though there may be only one instance of the search term. LSI isn’t new, it has been in full effect for a few years now; however some people still aren’t aware it exists.

How should that affect my search engine optimisation efforts?

The advent of latent semantic indexing means the end of keyword stuffing. Now you can write as naturally as possible, in language that speaks only to your consumers, and the search engines will still hear you, index you, and push you up the rankings.

You can now build a much broader profile of keyphrases (preferably long tail ones) that are related to your business, without the fear that you are diluting your keyword strategy and missing out on clicks, because your SEO strategy wasn’t  focused enough on a particular keyphrase.

In fact, if you write for humans (which the Google-bot is increasingly becoming, remember!), you’ll get higher traffic figures, and more unsolicited links, which will be of big benefit to your web marketing campaign anyway. Enjoy your content freedom – and if it’s all a bit much, the specialists at Web Marketing Experts can help you out.

Minimize your risk as you are maximizing your online visibility. In some internet advertising methods, you are required to pay larger investments than what SEO is asking. Paid advertising can bring instant results, unlike organic search engine optimization. However, it also gets your position down fast just as how your results went up. In SEO, you cannot bring your site to an instant rank but you must bide a little time to see results. But contrary to the “fast ripe, fast rotten” effect of paid advertising, natural search optimization can make your name stay in searches for a long time.

Your site must also be designed to fit the demands of search engine optimization. This is the reason why a good web design can bring more benefits to make your site become more search engine friendly. When your site shows up in the front pages of SERPs, you can now start to earn huge benefits from this exposure. Business then can be guaranteed with better traffic, and greater conversion from these visits.

If you prefer to bring big graphics and animations to your pages, there is a big chance that you will be left out by search spiders. They do not like to index sites that are hard to download. So, it is preferable to stick to simple but substantial page content. Get high return for your web marketing promotion.

For more ideas on search engine optimization that brings visible results, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

A video that is properly done can actually generate traffic towards your website. Each day, there are millions of people who access the internet and most of them click on the video or networking sites even if other sites have the most attractive web design. Once you submit your videos on the sites that are frequently visited then your marketing efforts can easily reach out to a desirable number of users. This is where you can get your prospects.

Before starting the video for your online promotion, the preparation of necessary details is a must. As much as possible, create the entire lay out of the video on paper to make sure that the messages you want convey to your targeted audience are clear. An effective internet marketing strategy goes directly to the point as far as promoting goods and services are concerned.

As the attention span of people is short, make sure that your video would not exceed 5 minutes. Unless it has an awesome content, people can no longer take the entire business presentation if it takes more than that. Also consider how you deliver an informative video to avoid misleading the viewers. Videos with information that is not related to your business would be pointless. Make sure that the viewers get what you are trying to convey.

In the construction of the whole video, a web cam and microphone would be enough. Expensive equipment is not necessary unless you are working for international business firms. And like any other online SEO techniques, never take for granted the keywords as well as the tags. They also play a vital factor for your online promotion.

For further queries on the essentials of video marketing, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

•    Create relevant titles for your web pages. As much as possible incorporate 2-3 keywords to the names of each page that provides a clear descriptive overview of its content.

•    Provide Meta tag descriptions that generate sales. Think of it as the only web marketing technique that gives you the chance to get buying customers. Placing something on the Meta tag that is not enticing would mean giving away potential customers to any of your online business competitors. Know the metrics of page Meta tags.

•    Have relevant content for your site. Poor quality content will lead your site to poor search engine rankings especially with Google. The goal of search engines is to deliver a suitable website to every query that a person asks from their database. If your website has that valuable content, chances are, your site will get the first recommendation.

•    Create the right website address since it is considered as the most important element of an effective SEO. If possible, secure a URL that contains at least 1 or 2 keyword/s that is/are considered vital to your business.

•    Provide an xml sitemap for your website. It is like having an index (like that of a book) to a search engine. This would make the job of search engine crawlers a lot easier.

•    As for the major headings, it is recommended that you use the H1 tags. H2 and H3 tags are suitable for smaller headings. Make sure that keywords are included within these headings.

•    Create your website’s online presence. If people find it interesting and informative then definitely they will come back for more. Not only that, since they like your site, referrals are then possible. This would mean an increase in traffic and sales generation along the way.

Generating sales for your online business can be easy if you know how to work on smart internet marketing techniques with Google.

For further queries on effective SEO techniques, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Your marketing methods must not rely on the paid advertisements that cost you more money. With search optimization, you can even get promoted with low investment! This is the reason why this becomes a preferred type of online advertising. If you want to attract new people to your site, optimization can bring your name to the top ranks of searches. Internet users trust search results because this is the most efficient way of getting valuable information on a certain topic or product.

When you know how to take advantage of search engines, your website can benefit from the exposure search engines give to valued sites. Search engines index sites that comply with specific standards. In addition to that search engine optimization is a campaign that knows how to bait the spiders to get your site noticed. When you have the idea on how to choose a web marketing campaign to boost your popularity, you can have quality site visits and conversion. This makes it easy for your website to multiply profit and thus, achieve the goals on target.

Your web design is the face that you provide to your visitors. So, the design must contain the right elements that will also comply with the factors that are important for search spiders. However, optimization must also go hand in hand with the right web design. It is one way of assuring the customers that you are intent in giving them the best service and products.

If you want to know more on how search engine optimization can give benefits to your online business, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Basically, SEO considers two things- the off page and on page factors before your site receives a desirable number of potential customers.

Off Page optimization refers to the tasks that are performed off the pages of your existing website. Here are some of the off page optimization procedures.

•    Getting link popularity through social networking, forum postings, link baiting, article promotions, log commenting and many other more.

•    Using anchor texts in the links.

•    Building quality links that includes the page rank and authority sites.

On-page optimization on the other hand refers mainly to the text and content of your web pages. The ongoing search engine optimization process depends so much on the content in order for search engine crawlers to notice your site when a search is made. Here are some of the on-page optimization processes.

•    The optimization of your site’s Meta tags which includes the title tags, descriptions, keywords and the Alt tags.

•    The creation of a sitemap  to ensure that the web pages will be indexed by the search engines

•    Creating an error-free html code.

•    Production of valuable contents for your site. The bits of information that you will be providing must be original and interesting or else search engine spiders will just ignore it. Duplicate content must be avoided at all times.

•    Internal linking of the pages in your site. Never use invisible or hidden links. This will give your site an undesirable ranking.

If the things mentioned above are carefully followed then your web marketing techniques will take your online business to its desired bottom line.  An attractive web design alone is not sufficient in generating quality links. The proper combination of the on page and off page factors will then provide your site with qualified traffic.

For more tips on off page and on page optimization, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

The convenience of easy access to the internet has provided companies a better way to realize their marketing potential. This is the reason why they are taking advantage of the immense power of online advertising. But before your business can appear in the pages of the search engines, your site has to go through complicated methods in order to meet  SEO requirements. A good site analysis will help you to get the most profitable approach in optimization. This is what website optimization is all about. Effective optimization will provide your site with numerous visitors which in the long run can turn into buying customers. That is where online profit originates.

Since search engines work through its spiders or crawlers, you have to feed them the right information in order for your site to get noticed. This would mean that your site must contain valuable information associated with specific keywords that matches to certain queries. The more quality content your site provides, the more relevant it becomes to search spiders.

Another thing that you have to consider is the on-page factor. Aside from having an attractive web design, proper inclusion of titles and headers to content is also necessary. In the web pages, headers that are related to targeted search terms can help bolster your site’s page ranking. And lastly, never undermine the power of quality links. Search spiders value those incoming links since these create a signal that your site holds valuable web contents that other sites find to be very beneficial.

One would say that effective web marketing is enough to maximize your online business’ profit maximization goal. But with the constant algorithm changes that occur in the search engines, there is a need for efficient search engine optimization, one that is timely and ethical as well.

For further queries about search engine optimization techniques, call www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

For a web marketing technique to work, you need to create user-friendly websites. Here are some ways on how to come up with attractive and effective websites for your business.

•    Consider the balance of images and texts in your site. Make sure that the images are not too powerful and lead the viewers away from what they are supposed to get.

•    Always bear in mind that creating interesting headlines entices the visitor to further read the given information. Just be careful in choosing a suitable text color and size.

•    Consider using captions on images. Like the papers, people like captions attached to pictures.

•    Your website must be designed according to user friendly interface and navigation structure. This will create an effective web design since the viewing customer gets the necessary information quickly and in a more convenient way. As much as possible, minimize the unnecessary clicks that users have to go through or else they will navigate away from your site.

•    Include some interactive features because they are essential to internet marketing. Creating areas for feedbacks, blogs, surveys or forum can be a great help.

•    Avoid the flashing images and when you integrate multimedia with your site, see to it that their file size is small.

•    Content of your site is important and so make sure that it goes through proof reading and spell check. Avoid the copy and paste method. Plagiarism takes your website to a risk of being blacklisted in the search engines.

•    Choose the right set of keywords that enhances the promotion of your products and services. As what SEO tries to convey, right frequency and prominence of such satisfies web spiders thus making your site more visible in the internet. High website visibility means greater profit for your business.

For more effective techniques in creating user-friendly websites, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Here are some reasons why people still consider the power that search engine optimization provides their business:

First, with the dawn of marketing technology, the web generally outperforms the existing traditional sales channels. The rising number of people having access to the internet provides a great venue to obtain potential customers in the long run. However, with various online businesses that grab the opportunity, the web market has shown a cut-throat competition. This makes the optimization process necessary in outsmarting your business competitors.

Second, online marketers are shifting to wiser search engine optimization procedures from having the paid search drives. Why? It is more cost efficient. Allotting a huge amount of money in paid search drives is not the best option to take when recession is at hand.

Third, the search traffic created along with the optimization process is relatively unscathed by the crisis that the economy is experiencing. There is a tendency that sales might drop with faltering conversion rates but search traffic is staying where it is supposed to be. Recession cannot stop people from accessing the web. The convenience of having personal computers at home has increased the rate of searchers.

And lastly, the existing economic down cycle is the best time to re-asses your business. Some established companies might consider for a new web design and understandably, search engine optimization must also go with it.

Generating your desired profit can be quite difficult especially that the market competition is getting stiffer each day. New web marketing techniques might be the avenue to generating more income.

For further queries about how you can profit from search engine optimization, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Website promotion needs to operate with an effective internet marketing strategy. When you know how to go through the whole process, you can start gaining ground over your competitors. There are several online paid advertising that are available in the web, or you can also take another option of getting offline or free online promotion strategies. As long as you are sure about what you are promoting, then a suitable technique can be considered.

Posting blogs can be a good start. There are many free blogging services in the internet and you can use these blogs for your web marketing strategies. As much as possible, provide valuable information regarding your business but make sure not to mislead people. If you want to get as many potential customers as possible, learn to build trust along the way.

Another thing is to wholly optimize your website. The visibility of your website depends on the search ranking it gets. The higher the ranking spot, the more visible your site becomes. Populating your web pages with efficient keywords can take your website to your desired ranking and generate the necessary quality traffic. If your homepage contains the main keywords, chances are, the major search engines can locate your site once searches are conducted. When these things are achieved, profit maximization is expected. An experienced SEO can assist you on how things are done.

Article marketing is another way of promoting your website and the other option that you can consider. This is done through article submission to the article marketing directories. Write an article about your business then have it submitted to EZineArticles, searchwrap, ideamarketers, and articledashboard. The whole process can consume a lot of time but generally, these things are being offered for free.

If you want to come up with worthwhile rewards for your website, a good web design is not enough. Sales and profit would depend on how your website attracts the search engine spiders as well as the potential customers.

For more effective website promotion tips, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

The advantage of having promotional videos is that you are able to reach customers in a very systematic manner. Instead of selling right away, the people are provided with ideas on whether what they are about to purchase is worth the investment. When the eyes are satisfied, the customer initiates the opening of purse strings.

A good web design attracts customers. But for some people, browsing through websites’ animation and reading the valuable bits of information can be boring at times. This is the very reason why video promotional materials are considered effective in reaching out to potential buying customers. In this fast paced world, people would prefer something quick and as much as possible avoid things that would tax their brains.

Here are some tips on how to through the promotional videos and make it as an effective tool for web marketing.

First, in doing the video, you must be certain about what you are offering to the viewing public. This helps in eliminating unnecessary information that might mislead customers. Be straightforward. Customers need quick but valuable information dissemination.

Second, choose the appropriate visuals and text. Your video ad must contain appealing visuals suited to the product or services you are promoting. Avoid the unnecessary complicated graphics. In having such, people might get too interested with the effects preventing them from getting your desired message. As with the texts, learn to vary text sizes that suit the available ad space. The use of two fonts would do and as much as possible, all caps must be avoided.

And lastly, consider the design of your whole promotional video especially on how it appears to people. Have it reviewed many times before making it as your official business’ video ad.

Having the promotional video is like SEO. While the optimization process gets you high ranking and yield high returns on investment, video ads gets you the buying customers and generate profit at the same time.

For more ideas on how to make an effective promotional video for your online businesses bottom line, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Here are some ways on how to enhance your internet marketing techniques that yields better traffic and high page ranking in Google.

•    Always provide quality information to the web browsers. The contents placed in your web pages plays a vital role in generating quality web traffic as well as potential buying customers thus increasing your venture’s desired profit. And in giving valuable resources, always provide keyword rich articles in your pages.

•    Choose an appropriate domain name that can easily be remembered. Once people are already familiar with your domain, chances are, it will be the first thing that they will remember when searching in Google or with the other major search engines.

•    Try to have balance in driving traffic towards your website. Get other traffic sources aside from the search engines by forming strategic links with webmasters and interacting in forums or in various online communities.

•    If you think that web marketing is quite insufficient in generating your desired traffic, venture in off-line promotion. Consider the traditional way of advertising your products and services or URL. Also try the PPC advertising as it will surely provide you the targeted traffic.

•    Also try having the so called “viral” products such as the ebooks and the free software programs that brings your link into the busy marketplace.

•    Pay attention to onsite SEO factors as they can influence site rankings. Make sure that your meta tags, title descriptions, keyword density, and interior linking structures are appropriate. Have your site submitted to other smaller search engines and don’t dwell too much on the ever-changing Google basket.

•    And lastly, consider using the off-page optimization for the potential keywords. By producing keyword rich articles you can build numerous anchor text links.

Generating quality traffic to conquer the challenges that Google ranking creates is not just about creating an attractive web design. It’s about thinking of smart ways of outsmarting the Google search engine.

For more ideas on how you can make profit from an optimized site, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Here are some suggested techniques in order to generate quality traffic for your website:

•    Learn how to master the right use and selection of effective keywords in order to increase your chances of getting visited by people who are browsing the internet. Incorporating the right keywords in your web pages can contribute in the online visibility of your website.

•    Provide readers with regularly updated articles and press releases. This provides the long term exposure of your website.

•    Create quality links. The linking strategy that you are going to employ can contribute a lot in your website optimization process.

•    Invest in paid advertising if there is a budget allotted for it. Subscribing to the advertising programs of the major search engines can help your website generate the desired quality traffic.

•    And lastly, create a page where your visitors can place their contact details. This opt-in page can be very beneficial if you have the auto-responder mailing list.

The whole process of generating quality traffic is not done overnight. It takes considerable amount of your time and effort.

Most of the business owners looking to an increased traffic generation eventually end up hiring a qualified professionals suited to the job. Experience in the field of web marketing is an edge towards accomplishing your business maximization of goals.

Having an attractive web design alone can never guarantee your business success in the long run. You have to focus on other optimization essentials like website content and link building. Without getting quality website traffic, your online business is considered out of the competition.

For more ideas on how to get more profit from your site through SEO, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

In connection, it also enhances the likelihood for collecting and closing business transactions. Now, being that search engines mainly rely on spiders to determine the relevance and credibility of a site, it is important that their standards are satisfied, especially during the indexing process. However, this cannot be accomplished, first hand, if a site’s web design is poorly constructed and unrecognizable.

A good web design denotes more than just creating beautiful, creative websites for an online company. In order for it to be useful in optimization, it should readily portray the niche product and address the target consumers, in addition to providing clear distinctions for search engine spiders to crawl during indexing.

In light of this, here are a few things you must secure with your website, in order for it to be useful for the optimization process:

•    First, it should utilize standard, non-demanding applications for design; those that are easily seen and appreciated by web crawlers, and at the same time, attractive to online searchers.

•    Second, it should be easily navigated through. Searchers should not find it difficult to transition through web pages in the site.

•    Third, it should clearly demonstrate the products, services or the massage it desires to extend. Searchers and web crawlers do not like web pages that serve as fillers.

•    Fourth, the texts and colors should be accommodating for searchers. Avoid the use of fonts and colors that make reading a challenge.

There are plenty of other simple web design guidelines that you can follow in order to fully achieve the benefits of SEO. What is vital to remember in this task is that the construction of a good web design is a constantly evolving process. As such, as much SEO activities religiously maintained; the web design should also be continually developed so that it can timely adapt to the trends and demands of the online circuit.

For more ideas on how SEO web design can build your business, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

The principles behind numbers are something that’s recognized globally. They make up the bulk of life, and more so, in business. Thus, it comes as no surprise that you will frequently encounter number whenever, wherever and whatever your query is concerning the internet. Numbers are indispensable forms of quantification and are useful in verifying the significance or status of a certain site or commodity. Through numbers, people can immediately gauge the condition and dependability of the subject at hand. And in connection, they can also directly come up with the appropriate conclusions or solutions for it.

Simply speaking, numbers have meanings and often times; they help us determine the truth behind certain things. So in light of the questions posed, it is most likely that numbers are the ones that maintain the growth of companies, give them great influence over consumers and provide them that leverage over competitors. Now, how to go about securing those numbers is another question entirely; one that will most probably be answered by an internet marketing strategy known as search engine optimization.

SEO takes control of the numbers that your online business gets from search engines. This, in addition to what it produces over its period of service. Through the mixture and continuous application of web-based activities that involve a business site’s web design, content, keywords and links, SEO succeeds in acquiring the best numbers for an online enterprise. It is upon reaching the top most position in the SERPs and acquiring page ranking of 10 that one can readily identify that SEO is working at its best, as a web marketing strategy, for your online business.

The following achievements help It is also with this phenomenon that one can safely assure him or herself of a safe and advantageous online standing. SEO tasks that are carefully and religiously sustained can guarantee progressive development of any online business inspite of today’s economy.

For more ideas on how SEO can build your business, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Search engine optimization mainly involves search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN. It aims to influence their organic processes in order to propel a site up the search engine page result list, where it can easily be seen and accessed. SEO consists of a number of internet marketing methods that collectively manipulate the reaction of search engine spiders towards a site. It pays particular attention to a site’s web design, keyword usage, links and content and endeavors to make it more accommodating to crawlers that determine the page ranking of the site. High page ranking is very helpful in diverting more web traffic to a site.

SEO is not that difficult to initiate. What’s more is that it’s relatively free. So you won’t have to deal with budget constraints. The only problem internet marketers encounter regarding this web marketing strategy is that it is very tedious and time-consuming. Most fall through with maintaining the quality and application of SEO tasks because it’s too demanding and the outcome don’t readily manifest. In consequence, their SEO endeavors often do not produce any lucrative result. And in the case it does, it predictably lasts for only for a short while and the optimized site is again overshadowed by other aggressive online companies.

Before deciding on pushing through with an SEO-centered marketing plan, you must resolve within yourself to see it through until the end. SEO will only generate long-lasting success if it is fervently observed by its architect. As proven by plenty of online business, SEO can adequately deliver transactions and profits. In fact, it is now considered the main driving force behind online success.

If you want to learn methods to profit more from your site, visit http://www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

SEO pertains to a set of interrelated tasks that helps transform business opportunities into moments of success. It involves a number of web marketing tactics and strategies, that make business sites more appealing to online searchers. Its main venue is usually the internet and often times; it does not require too much financial expenditure. The appeal derived from SEO more than satisfies the need for aggressive internet marketing. And with meticulous planning of structural elements, such as the web design, keywords, content and links, a site is able to generate massive mass appeal that helps it fare equally and even superiorly against other online businesses that cater to the same niche market.

No matter how far along you are in the process, SEO will basically follow the same protocol and will involve the same considerations. So to help you get further acquainted with it, here are a few ideas on how you can turn your ideas into gold.

•    Research on the keywords that you can apply that will generally relate to your target consumer’s state of mind.  These keywords are what you can use to connect your product or services and their desires. With the right set of keywords, you will be able to rally your products to potential customers at a position that’s most conducive for closing transactions. Keywords make up the core of your content.

•    In relation, build up content that connects with your target consumers. And make sure to update it regularly so that they have a reason to recurrently visit your site.

•    Span out your thoughts and let it be known across the Net. Don’t be afraid to submit entries in blog sites so that: one, you’d have strong backlinks towards your sites, and two, you’d be able to get in touch with varying searcher demographics.

The more people know about your ideas, the more chances your site, products and services will be entertained and patronized.

For more ideas on how you can turn your ideas into cash-generating moves, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Technology has significantly revolutionized our lives. With its contributions to the fields of recreation, education, and information dissemination, it’s no surprise that it has also reached down and transformed the face of trade and commerce. New media has exceptionally reinvented business concepts, making it more dynamic and innovative. It has shortened the gap between consumers and producers and its byproducts, including the Net, has improved and hastened business processes, right from production, down to delivery.

In a matter of seconds, people are now able to seek out their desired products and services and initiate transactions. At the same time, producers are also able to reach their target consumers around the world, without dealing with the stresses of caravans and trade shows. Internet marketing is the new promotional approach that’s creating waves in the business industry. And in the middle of it all, search engine optimization resounds as a trusted tool for success.

Now, among the tasks that SEO encompasses, the most important would probably be the creation of a search-engine friendly web design and the research and application of the right keywords. It is upon these two that that page ranking is initially determined. Web design and keywords serve as markers of the content and functionality of a site. With proper use, both could earn a high page ranking for the site.

This usually reflects positively on the position of the site on the search engine page results. However, it is only momentary since there’s no significant amount of web traffic diverted to the site. In such a case, the other activities that SEO entails, like blog submissions, content development and link building, are pursued to ensure that the ranking is improved. With continuous observation of SEO protocol, your site will become substantially empowered in the online market.

Not everyone is aware of the full potential of search engine optimization. Those who practice it have yet to perfect this web marketing technique. As such, SEO is a free for all marketing strategy. No reservations needed. Given proper orientation, anyone can use it to boost their business. So if you are thinking about delving into the online market, don’t hesitate to explore search engine optimization. It might just be what you need to turn your bright ideas to big bucks.

For more ideas on how you can use SEO to drive your business forward, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

SEO is not a one-size-fits-all procedure nor is it something fabricated out of random acts. It is an assortment of actions rooted upon strategic search engine based principles, which has been studied and tested by SEO predecessors. Sad to say, these principles are what current SEO experts frequently disregard when faced with the task. More often then not, they position themselves at contradicting ends, considering varying options as either more important or more irrelevant to site optimization. What they fail to recognize is that they are SEO is one school of thought, no matter how much it has evolved through the years.

It is a given, different situations call for different approaches. In web marketing, the options are abundant. But even though there is selectivity in the process, when it comes to optimization, there is still basically one aim: the improvement of a site’s performance in the online market. As such, optimization, no matter who performs it, must be strictly guided by the same fundamental rules. It’s easy to get lost between the good and bad SEO practices given the thin partition. This is why, to guide old practitioners, as well as new ones; I’ve collected some of the most basic DO’s and DONT’s of search engine optimization.

First, for the DO’s:

1.)    Make sure to research your keywords thoroughly. They are the primary elements of your site’s content. Make sure the keywords you use are correct and have the least amount of competitors. That way, you get a bigger chance at being indexed with a higher page ranking.

2.)    Perfect all the details of your website. After all, it serves several purposes. Aside from being the home of your products and services, your site is what initially entices customers to discover your business. In addition, it is also one of those elements that web crawlers consider when they’re indexing a site. So make sure that your site’s web design is created in a search-engine friendly and viewer-friendly manner. This will increase the possibility of online visibility in the future.

3.)    Continually enrich your content. The more relevant and updated it is; the better! Users want to be informed about the things that they are interested in. Serve that interest in order to reap the rewards of bountiful web traffic.

4.)    Build inbound links from credible sites. Links help divert web traffic. The more respectable the source, the greater it compliments your site.

5.)    Be patient. SEO takes time. In addition, it requires constant improvement.

Internet marketing can be the only solution if online companies are serious in improving the number of site visitors, and produce more sales in the process. In this regard, a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) can be hired to do the online promotion for your company. SEO uses keywords to target a position in the search pages and thus, be visible to your market when they search for products like what you want to offer. This is done through using words to search for what they want, the search engines being the vehicle to carry out the hunt for companies and organizations that provide the particular product or service.

In SEO, web design is a must. When a site is optimized, and yet looks bad when searchers find them, chances are, the hunt is immediately given a conclusion. Whereas, when searchers click on a link they find in first search page, and see that the site is pleasing to the eyes, and easy to navigate as well, there is bigger probability that the user will check the site longer. On the reverse, if the web design is good yet there is no optimization implemented for it, then efforts to sell to a larger market will utterly fail. Therefore, professionals in the search optimization industry know how to fit your web design and optimize your keywords in order to be both friendly to search engines and attractive to users.

There is no room for mistakes in business when you can simply hire an SEO company that will take care of your web marketing promotion.

For more guidelines on how you can make your site appear in searches, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

What is it about SEO that makes it so irreplaceable? Well, for one, it encompasses everything that there is to know and consider in internet marketing; from the structure of a site, to its content, and its business environment. It is even associated with some of the known marketing tools often utilized for web marketing. When we talk about SEO, we don’t just talk about one specific agenda. SEO is a collection of internet-based activities that help divert traffic and improve a site’s visibility online.

For the most part, this visibility contributes a great deal to the number of click-throughs a site gets per day. But more than that, SEO provide a holistic and certainly longer lasting improvement to an online business’ status in the worldwide market. With the attention SEO gives to web design, a site better accommodates their users when they visit. With the focus it provides for content, online companies easily send out their messages to people. Conversely, online users effortlessly get to access what they are looking for online. This “pull” marketing strategy uniquely draws in people instead of seeking them out to purchase their retailed good and products. SEO captures a greater percentage of profit because it situates a site directly in front of an online surfer who is intent on buying something that it offers. Furthermore, SEO makes an online company adaptable to shifting market trends. This means that any past efforts with SEO will remain relevant in the future despite any modifications. SEO not only gives online business a great marketing advantage in web marketing but also keeps them competitive and certainly, productive without burning their budget. SEO is quite cheaper compared to the traditional “push” marketing strategies and is highly effective in increasing investment returns. You can even perform search engine optimization yourself, for FREE, if you are knowledgeable and skilled with the process.

For more ideas on how you can use SEO to your best advantage, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Clearly, the global recession has made a tremendous impact on the course of the business industry. The aftermath of the shockwaves it sent has devastated and damaged numerous companies all over the globe. When you look at the situation carefully, you’d see how impractical it is to spend on promotional campaigns when there’s a need to cut back on expenses. However, with the urgency to boost sales and improve one’s business status, it probably wouldn’t hurt to bank on a reliable web marketing tool.

In relation, SEO is the most popular internet marketing strategy considered by online business to date. Well, this comes as no surprise since SEO is synonymous to success, especially when it comes to promoting a web-based company. From web design, to content and associations; SEO takes part in every aspect of an online business. As such, it requires a lengthier time for development. But unlike paid advertisements, SEO provides longer lasting positive effects and is also more affordable. Most promotional tools just extend your presence somewhere other than your site. But SEO positions you where you can be seen by everyone. Thus, it opens up bigger opportunities for online growth and expansion; not to mention, it helps multiply your investments.

Search engine optimization focuses on increasing your business site’s visibility online. With this visibility, you are more likely to attract visitors. This then, equates to more transactions and bigger income. With SEO, you don’t have to spend much to get much in return. With proper knowledge about search engine processes and guidelines, a handful of time and the right tools, you’d be able to work out your own SEO magic on your site. Alternatively, you can also hire an SEO company who will perform continuous site optimization for you at reasonable rates. What’s great about SEO is that you can measure it’s effectiveness through several metrics. With conversion rates and page ranking, you’d be able to assess how your site is doing against online competition.

For more ideas on how you can help your business achieve its potential, log on to www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

As most of us agree, marketing is probably one of the more costly undertakings during the infant stages of an online business. Aside from it takes time, usually, it also takes a lot of money in order for an internet marketing campaign to be effective. Marketing is an important business milestone that needs to be accomplished. But despite its significance, there is essentially no need to spend much on promoting a site, product or service. SEO is a cost-effective and lucrative web marketing tool that you can apply and it will generate the same or even better results than paid ads.

With SEO, all you have to do is pay meticulous attention to factors like keywords, links, content and web design; ensuring that they are applied or created search-engine friendly manner. Now, all of these are essentially free. You can find online sites that can provide you with assistance on keywords and links. Content basically originates from your mind. In terms of web design, all you need is a computer and sufficient technical knowledge on how to make it readable to search engine crawlers, as well as usable, functional, accessible, easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye.

It’s hard to start up an online business with essentially nothing. But given a positive mindset and of course, ingenuity; you can achieve almost anything you dream of in life. All that matters is if you’re willing to take the challenge. According to Timothy Ferris, successful businesses are usually created out of a general lack. It is from this lack that entrepreneurs make the most out of their resources and generate creative ideas that help them meet their goals. Now, online businesses are not necessarily built on a huge budget, in contrast to what is commonly preconceived. In fact, there is actually an inverse relationship between a company’s funding and its long-term success.

As proven by famous online companies today, you don’t need thousands of dollars to be able to claim millions in revenue. What you need is a strategy that will effectively launch your face in the online industry. Now, I’m not trying to discredit the impact of financial backing on building and maintaining an online empire; God knows it can be helpful. What I’m trying to say is that you need not be discouraged if you barely have anything for a start-up on your plate. When it comes to online ventures, your internet marketing campaign is not fully reliant on the amount of budget that have. In most cases, it is in the options you carefully weigh and use that you can guarantee your victory.

For more ideas on how to make SEO work for your business, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Businesses too need tending. They are not like weeds that pop out and survive on their own. So how then, can small businessmen triumphantly manage their online companies in an arid trading environment and make them into income-generating multinational corporations; this, without actually contributing that much to the process? By simply aligning themselves with a web marketing company whose expertise is in search engine optimization.

SEO has long been used to influence the online ecosystem for the advantage of an internet-based business. But it is only in recent times that it has gained much popularity and respect. Its affordability and effectiveness in doubling investment returns has made it ideal for use in this time economic crisis. But more than that, SEO has more than once proven itself to be powerful in building businesses. In comparison to paid ads, SEO does more in endorsing a product and encouraging the public to avail of it. Essentially, with SEO, entrepreneurs need not spend more to get more out of their business endeavors.

The SEO process aims to fashion a business’ website in a way that would make it more search-engine friendly, thereby increasing its chances at topping the SERPs. It gives emphasis on web design, content, keywords and links, making sure that they are created, chosen and applied in a manner that would interest and satisfy search engine crawlers. Satisfied web crawlers equal to high page ranking.

As a result, the site becomes more visible and accessible to online users; 80% of which are leaning towards purchasing a good or service from the site they browse into. With this, online businesses face greater opportunities at generating transactions and consequently, increasing their income. Search engine optimization is indeed a very useful internet marketing you can apply to further your business. But the better news you need to hear is that you can actually spare yourself from the tedious task of maintaining it by hiring an SEO company. They will secure for you business success while you spend only 2 hours a day at work. The challenge for you now is to find the right professionals to partner with.

For more ideas on how to get a marketing strategy that works, please visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

It’s a challenge enough to build a business with limited finances; how much more to maintain it considering competition and possibility of bankruptcy. Isn’t it disheartening to have to give up before you begin fighting because you think you just don’t stand a chance? You know what they say, “no guts, no glory.” Now, I’m not encouraging you to take the plunge without thoroughly considering your situation; don’t misunderstand. What I’m saying is that you can keep pursuing your dreams despite your constrained budget given you apply the right web design and internet marketing tools.

With the internet, it’s just a matter of knowing how to wield its potential. Businesses that are purely internet-based may not have the stability of a concrete structure. However, they do get higher chances of being visited by potential customers. If they play their cards right, they might just be looking at long-term business success.

Search engine optimization is one internet marketing strategy that they can use to strengthen relationship with a customer. SEO helps the consumer and retailer meet halfway in the vast region of the Web. A business is also guaranteed of a competitive position in the online market, which makes it stand ahead of commercial rivals. Furthermore, it can expect a higher ROI because aside from saving on web marketing propaganda, it now also has the capability of increasing its volume of sales and profits.

For more tips on how you can use SEO for a long-term business in the Web, please visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

It’s obvious how huge the impact of the current financial fallout has on our industry. In light of the economic struggle we are facing, several companies have been reduced to choices that force them to compromise some aspects of their business. The times call for a band aid solution that could help prevent further economic demise. They come in the form of downsizing and sometimes, even foreclosure.

The world of business is slowly turning into chaos. But who would have thought that today’s recession will still produce some of the most inspiring and triumphant businesses ventures. At present, the online industry is still booming even in the wake of a crisis. As a matter of fact, online companies have even increased in number, selling everything and anything that could be sold. The internet, after all, is an amazing business arena.

It gives you access to all your needed resources and allows you to reach out to more consumers at a shorter amount of time. But what’s testing about the internet is its unpredictability. As such, one cannot readily assume a position in the business hierarchy without putting in a little SEO effort. With SEO:

•    Your company can get multiple returns for a relatively low investment. With SEO, you get to augment your online visibility, popularity, credibility and revenue. Unlike a media advertisement that costs thousand or maybe even millions and does not guarantee any one of these facets, optimization can guarantee an improvement in AT LEAST three, given continuous and dedicated performance. You can either do it by yourself or hire an SEO company that can maintain the task for you. But it will certainly be less than what you will spend with a personality endorsement.

•    You also get to experience the benefits for a longer period of time. SEO takes time to do. But its effects also take time to dissolve.  Optimization can take your business as far into the future, given the proper maintenance.

•    You get to make the most out of your online business and its environment. SEO takes advantage of the fact that there are more internet users today; that most of the internet users pay more attention to the sites with high organic search ranking; and that a significant portion of them have every intention of purchasing a product or service from a site that it highly relevant and credible in the SERPs. It makes use of links, keywords, web design and content in order to address these facts and manipulate them to your company’s advantage.

For more ideas on SEO, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Now, the application of optimization techniques significantly impact internet marketing. For one, it diverts the necessary traffic and gives a site that needed boost in ranking. The resulting visibility often leads to effective business exposure and promotion. But going beyond that, SEO offers online businesses a number of openings for partnership and expansion without giving the proprietor a run for his money. This affords online entrepreneurs more chances for cost-effective online growth and development. For some businesses, SEO is their bread and butter. It is the life-giving blood that keeps their engines working. Search engine optimization puts them at equal footing with other older, larger and more experienced companies and keeps them competitive despite financial constraints.

Online advertising can be done in many ways. A great online presentation is one of the best marketing approaches any business can utilize for their web marketing campaign. A website does more than just present the products and services of your company. It is what introduces your company to the public. It is what conveys your message and allows you to become more recognizable against competitors, by either audiences or search engine spiders. The correct web design must be implemented in order to effectively market your site. It must apply the correct design principles, use the right the keywords and links, and contain sufficient updated content, in order to fare well in the rankings and become popular among online searchers. Whether you run a small, medium or multinational enterprise, the structure of your website weighs heavily on how it can and will be marketed. So make sure that you solicit the help of expert web designers that are literate when it comes to creating search-engine friendly web designs; that is if you want to get the most out of your campaign.

If you need to build effective web marketing online, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au to get ideas on great web design.

Considering that the world of online marketing is highly competitive, it will take consistent and dedicated optimization methods to push a site up the ranks and eventually earn its desired following and revenue. In addition, it will also require the correct application of optimization techniques. Often times, web designers make the crucial mistake of going overboard with their designs in an attempt to impress their customers. What they fail to address in this scenario is the site’s supposed contribution to SEO. They built sites that are difficult or impossible for search engines spiders to read. As a result, the site they made is not indexed in search engines and left out of the search results. To avoid making the same mistake, here are a few website design principles aspiring designers can follow.

•    First, make your text readable. Don’t mix and match colors. As much as possible, stick to what is convenient to the eye. Personally, I get turned off at sites that have loud background colors and small text fonts that are quite indiscernible. I believe a lot of online folks do too.

•    Second, make your navigation easy. Ensure that your links work and that they lead users to the requested page. Keep your site’s hierarchy clear and consistent. For websites that contain more than 10 web pages, place a site map or index page. Also, place navigation tools somewhere they can be readily seen and used.

•    Third, be careful of your use of images and applications. Use graphics that are easily recognized by web spiders and that do not stall your web page’s upload time. Give your site a modest look. And if you must exaggerate, make sure that the pictures you attach are in connection to the theme of your site.

•    Fourth, always keep your target viewers in mind. Make sure that your site has all the useful information they need. In addition, apply the correct keywords in headings, meta tags and content so they can easily find and access you.

If you want to get a web design that is search engine friendly, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

An increase in online visibility naturally generates greater ranking and more clicks on a site. This subsequently increases the number of transactions it makes and overall, improves its standing in terms of revenue. People who are targeting specific products and services often turn to more visible sites for their needs. As such, it is quite necessary for a site to have a great quantity of traffic driven its way in order through position in the SERPs.

More than anything, this modern age has led people to grow more reliant on the World Wide Web for their daily consumption. With its speed, convenience and high level of accuracy, a greater number of consumers are now more confident in finding products and services they require through online solution providers. With SEO, internet companies are able to take advantage of this consumerist shift and amplify the number of retails they make. In a sense, it is SEO that gives them the ability to rally their goods in front of customers who are eager and willing to get them.

SEO services follow a sequence of steps that help reroute more traffic to a site.  The accurate performance of these steps often guarantees their effectiveness and positive impact on online competition. These steps, depending on the scale, may take as long as a few days, a few months or a few years before they become completely relevant and contributory to internet marketing success. However, they do require continuous practice in order to generate more lasting results.

Like any other endeavor, the first step to SEO involves research. As expected, this task is very significant since it serves as basis for all the other steps that follow. This portion of search engine optimization entails research on the niche product/market, the target consumer demographics, the niche competition, and the keywords to be used. The information collected will give insight on how the site can be marketed along with how it will stay in the running against competitors.

The next steps require SEO experts to check on the site’s HTML codes and meta tags, in addition to the keywords applied – if they are in the right density. With the right HTML codes, tags and keywords, it would not be difficult for search engine spiders to index and rank the site according to its niche. Link building is a consequential step that creates inflow of web traffic to a site. These links are acquired through directory submissions as well blogs and article posting, to name a few.

Still, SEO encompasses a broader spectrum of methods and strategies that manipulate search engine processes and drive traffic to your site. It would be best that you acquaint with it first, if you do decide to use to raise your standing and sales online.

For more information on how you can create a visible presence online, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Google was the first search engine to put natural or organic ranking on the map. Gaining a huge load of positive feedback from users on its prompt delivery of highly pertinent search results, other search engines also followed in its footsteps and applied page ranking on their respective database. By giving each website a slot in the hierarchy, people are now able to distinguish what site is most useful in their search.

Search engine spiders usually base the ranking they give to a site on the content, web design, keywords, and links it has, in addition other relevant elements. As implied, organic ranking is reliant on several objective criteria that are recognized and regularly observed by search engine spiders.

An SEO company usually utilizes organic ranking in order to increase a site’s visibility and credibility online. Aside from being cost-effective, organic ranking has also proven to be a powerful means in boosting a business’ popularity among online users. You see, with organic ranking, people can expect more credible and meaningful search results that are unadulterated by money.

Its impartial nature has made organic ranking a more reliable reputation and more people now prefer it over paid results. Searchers are more confident to browse and click through the results because they believe that what they are seeing and reading are all pertinent and related to the product or service they are looking for. A site with high organic rankings in search engines is bound to be entertained and patronized by online users.

Most online businesses nowadays believe that organic ranking can boost their revenues. Though it may take a lot of time and effort, and the results may not always be guaranteed, the benefits of organic ranking certainly outweigh all its downsides. With a greater number of productive outcomes and a trusted reputation, organic ranking is certainly the perfect optimization approach for any online business’ internet marketing.

If you want to get organic rankings to improve business performance, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

SEO can give your online business some leverage, especially in promotional campaigns. When it is done correctly, search engine optimization can generate bigger revenues for you and your business. With the traffic it can reroute to your site, you are sure to surpass other larger and more tenured online business in ranking. SEO is one of the most important and effective methods you can use to make your site more search engine-friendly, and in relation, more visible to online users.

Now, there are many ways to go about SEO for your internet marketing. With meticulous adherence to the terms and requirements of each element, your site will surely stand out among competitors.

External links takes up a huge part of the SEO cake. In fact, this is one aspect of SEO that requires complete and comprehensive attention. Link building is a “make or break” task. This means it can pull your site to either extreme without much consideration. Search engine spiders use links to index a site. Usually, the more high quality inbound links you have, the more important the search engine will think you are. Spiders will subsequently give you a high ranking in the search page results. This will then afford you more chances to be seen by online searches.

On the other hand, bad links from poorly ranked sites will pull you down the charts. So in light of this, you have to be careful about the directories you submit to or the sites you align with. A simple mistake can cost you the chance to hit big in the online market.

If you need to know how you can take advantage of search optimization, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au for more SEO guide.

How is this so? For those who are aware and actively participative in their business procedures, they hold no doubt that SEO is behind this appreciable success. It is undeniable that this internet marketing strategy plays a significant role in the life and death of online businesses. After all, it is through search engine optimization that companies are able to keep afloat amidst unpredictable economic tides; that is, despite being short on time and finances.

As such, SEO has undoubtedly reframed the standards and practices of business. In relation, it has given greater opportunities for people to explore profit possibilities. Nowadays, entrepreneurs are less hesitant to solicit assistance from an SEO company. But regardless of showing promising results, there are still some who are quite doubtful of the relevance of SEO in their business.

Search engine optimization enhances business visibility online. The principle that revolves around web visibility applies to all kinds of niche, whether for local or global market coverage. This is probably its biggest contribution to business success because it spawns other advantages like creating profit and saving time and money. With greater visibility, an online business will be able to market its products and services to more people, in a shorter amount of time, with less expenditure involved. With that much advertisement, SEO is bound to secure more visits for a site, which could possibly lead to more transaction and more earnings.

Time is gold. There is no reason why you should bank on marketing that does not offer the best organic means to appear in searches. Search optimization is the best line of defense against an ailing economy. Waste no precious time because you can easily fall on the procrastination trap. Start your search engine optimization plan today to help your business generate more income.

For more ideas on how to help you business achieve its full income potential, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au for more tips on search engine optimization.

The World Wide Web is currently teeming with millions of small and medium-seized companies, eager to be noticed and patronized. Internet marketing guarantees improvement in business revenue, and there are actually many online successes that can account for this idea. Web marketing has a number of advantages in comparison to traditional advertising media. It promises to break standards and deliver you an easy win in this business race, at a predictable time and rate.

Here are some of the advantages of web marketing:

1.) It’s easier to find and get in touch with your target consumers.

The web has the unique ability to put you in touch with your target segments, with precise definition of age, gender, ethnicity, location and frame of mind. It allows you to narrow your search for potential customers and focus on specific areas or population of interest, at any time of the day.

2.) It’s simpler to collect data regarding your market.

You can track and study an internet user’s behavior and learn about how each moves through the internet and responds to certain stimuli (advertising). The data you are able to gather will help you strategize on how to position yourself online.

3.)  It’s cheaper and more convenient to use.

Twenty-four seven, seven days a week advertising for free and you can create everything you need on your home computer. Doesn’t that sound like a fantastic deal?

4.) It’s faster to act and react on business trends and demands.

The net allows you to replace or update your ad any time of the day. When there are changes in the business climate, you can easily and promptly adapt to it. Online ads also allow you to immediately respond to product or service requests and deliver on the time that is specified.

5.) It’s more interactive.

This is probably the most noticeable advantage of web marketing. Traditional media cannot offer the dynamic and interactive environment of online advertising. The net is a far-reaching media that allows people to converge with people from all over the world.

Internet marketing needs proper SEO guidance for it to effectively draw in people and subsequently increase revenue. Online advertisements will be useless without being regulated by a systematic and well-mapped business plan. Search engine optimization is a collection of activities that will enable you to increase your online visibility. In partnership with online ads, SEO will certainly boost your business’ standing in the World Wide Web.

For more information on how to boost your site’s earning power, check out www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Even the most well-known sites go through a series of a lack of web traffic. No site is ever exempted from this experience and no one can outwardly predict its occurrence. Here are a number of tested methods for you to follow in the event that your SEO endeavors fail to reroute the expected bulk of traffic to your site.

However, before you set any plan into motion, you must first secure full comprehension of the work at hand and how it affects optimization. Uninformed action often leads to further demise. That’s why you must avoid it, especially with the circumstance.

1.) Set your eye on the prize: keywords, keywords, keywords!

Over and over again, keywords and content-rich articles have been highlighted essential for the SEO course. Again, and most especially during the lack of web traffic, you must focus on your keywords phrases in trying to build up your sites content. People search for specific terms or phrases. Bank on that reflex and make sure that your site corresponds directly to what an online searcher is looking for. You need to be careful of how you capitalize on this though. If you give too little or too much, the plan will surely backfire. So make it a priority to perform keyword research first before you try on this strategy and learn how to use it correctly in your internet marketing.

2.) Give a little more depth.

Your pictures and flash presentations will not be recognized and indexed by web crawlers if you overdo them. And it won’t always be the most attractive factor on your site for online surfers. Content is the bulk of your site. So give it a little more depth. Make it matter. Fill up your web page with updated, relevant content that makes use of targeted keywords. Let your site be an ideal contestant in this online pageantry and make it win that coveted traffic via the combination of depth and beauty.

3.) Sign up.

Make sure to register your URL on all the popular search engines. And while at it, follow their rules. Don’t ever attempt to cheat or trick search engines. They are thinking entities as well. One wrong move and your site may get booted out of the search engine database and blacklisted forever.

4.) Build up.

More good links means more credibility and consequently higher page ranking. Notice that I emphasized “good” in the previous sentence. SEO professionals often make the crucial mistake of getting preoccupied with numbers that they forget the quality of the links they collect. So make sure that you build on links that are related to your niche. Make sure they also have high ranking and lastly, try to get more inbounds. That way, your links will serve a better purpose in SEO.

Continue working on these and your site will surely have a continuous inflow of web traffic. SEO is vital in web marketing. And although it takes time, it would be to your advantage if you can devote ample attention to it.

If you want to get a good position in searches, check out www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

One way to evaluate your site’s requirements for gaining web traffic is through SEO. The strategies that SEO provide can really work for any kind of business. Unfortunately, many companies fail to look at these advantages because they think they can do other web marketing applications without the help of search rankings.

Improving your traffic will not be easy since you are not the only one who is offering the kind of products that you carry. There is a big market competition and if you have an idea how many companies are competing for the same attention, with the same products, then you will not hesitate to do something about it. Your company and its brands must stand out from the rest.

How would you achieve that? The first thing that search optimization provides is to give your site links to valuable sites. Link building becomes an asset for your site because other websites can refer to your site. You get more visitors from other sites that have linked you.

Another good effect of SEO is that you are provided a natural path to get your rankings in search results. This is one of the most fruitful outcomes that SEO can offer. If you have a difficult time to implement the steps to achieve the results, consulting with an SEO company will be most proper. SEO specialists certainly know the basics and advanced techniques that will help you site pull up on the popularity that you are seeking in the web. If you have small knowledge on SEO but not enough to produce the change you want, call an SEO firm to help you implement web marketing solutions that will transform your business.

For more information on SEO consulting, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au to get more tips on how to find the best SEO company.

5.) When you’re creating content, it might be best to first focus on your target audience rather than your business. Address their issues and concerns. Write articles and blogs that cater to their needs. Of course, you must not forget to use keywords, with the right density, in order to be crawled by web spiders. But then again, you must present relevant and readable content, in order to be noticed and appreciated by online surfers.

6.) When you have built a following, you must then upgrade the level of your write-ups so as to create unique and interesting content for your readers. You must endeavor to keep them updated and make them insightful. Readers love to be taught, moved and challenged. It is during this phase of the SEO process that you can pitch in your product or service, relating it to the content being expounded. Again, you must not forget to use the keywords in order to maintain categorization in search engines. You can even use these keywords as anchor texts for internal linkages, which in turn, help web spiders recognize what your other web pages are all about, and rank them accordingly.

7.) Along with building content, you must also build links to other websites. This will assist in increasing your credibility and page ranking. But this does not mean that the more linkages you have, the higher your credibility and ranking goes. No.

Link building is the same as the case of good apples being mixed with bad ones. When you align with poor ranking websites, your ranking is pulled down to. So you must build links with websites that have a page ranking of 6 and above. That will certainly boost your sites online visibility and integrity. Use trusted directories, like DMOZ or Aviva, to look for quality sites to link to, or to promote your site to other credible sites online.

8.) After you’ve settled your links, the next thing you can do is advertise. Use press releases wisely. Take advantage of social media and join forums and social networking sites. Submit blog entries to blog sites. Aside from making relevant one-way linkages to your site, these internet marketing strategies also enhance your online visibility.

SEO is an ongoing web marketing cycle. It may take as short as 6 months or as long as six years, no one can ever tell. The online market weather is something that is never really predictable. But regardless, with hard work and dedication, SEO will ultimately catapult your business to fame. Make sure to apply these tips in order to fully reap the rewards of search engine optimization.

For more tips on how to get good SEO, check out www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

SEO has been long practiced in web marketing and has successfully proven to boost a site’s popularity by taking advantage of a search engine’s normal indexing activity. With SEO, traffic is effectively and abundantly diverted to a site. This helps increase that site’s ranking in the SERP. With an increased ranking, it becomes more visible and visited by online searchers. The likely results of this endeavor are more purchases, more patronage and more revenue.

But SEOis not easy to perform. It follows specific principles and guidelines for it to effectively render its purpose. Search engine optimization is not a full-proof strategy. There are a few kinks and loose screws you must be wary of when you are trying to apply it. Thus, you need to be fully informed of the things you can and cannot do when you are trying to optimize a site. In light of this, here are a few tips you can use in SEO:

A. In Preparation

1.)    A great packaging can do wonders. So make sure you present your products or services neatly and attractively in your website. Clean out glitches and errors and guarantee that your site delivers what the customers ask for at the soonest possible time. The more user-friendly your site is; the better. So do away with all those complicated applications that sometimes disrupt the smooth transition of your web pages. Your priority is to create a smart and simple website to package your business.

2.)    If ever you do want your site to be flashy and intricate, then might as well include a site map page for your site. This will help web spiders index your web pages in search engines. If you have a large website, create plenty of site map pages.

3.)    Another helpful indexing strategy is to apply keywords in your URL’s and filenames. This way, web spiders will be able to immediately recognize and rank your site according to target topic.

4.)    Now, for the keywords that you are to use, make sure that you research on it first so as to avoid getting too much competition. Keywords are what makes you stand out online. If you use the wrong keywords, you might end up getting drowned by a bunch of other sites that use the same keywords; or worse, be disregarded by web crawlers because those you used were unacceptable.

There are a lot of free keyword research tools you can use like AdWords or WordTracker. You can use these keywords in making the page title and description for your website and in building up content for indexing, ranking and boosting credibility.

However, SEO, a good web marketing strategy can increase your chances of standing out against the competition that is growing deeper in the online market every moment.

Search engine optimization is primarily composed of 2 factors that make it a potent force as an internet marketing method. These two are described as the on-page and off-page essentials of a website.

On page optimization deals with the content and text that are inside the pages. It is the backbone of the SEO process that is being carried out for your site. This website content have to contain keywords so that when search engines sweep the web, your site can be included in their indexes. This has a favorable impact on you since search engines exercise a big influence in recommending sites to web searchers.

There are several on page factors that can be involved in your pages:

Web Page URL – Your URLs must be search engine friendly because search engines also look on this factor when evaluating your site. Your inner pages must be taken for granted because they are still part of the whole website. Therefore, your page URLs must contain a good keywords that are relevant to the contents in them.

Meta tags- These have a role to play in attracting the attention of search spiders. This should include keywords, titles and description that are relevant to the page.

Internal Links- This should be present in the page because it needs to have links to other sites as well. Major pages in your website should contain links to the homepage.

Sitemap Creation- This is needed so that when search engines crawl your site, all pages in it can be included in the inspection. The sitemap will serve as the guide of search robots so that they can easily find the path to each page that are in your site.

Quality Content- Place content that is both relevant and sensible for readers. It is not only the search engines that take pleasure in picking content that contains relevant information. You must also cater to the needs of your visitors.

If you need help in evaluating on-page condition of your website, you can visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

There are various internet marketing strategies that can be adopted but it will really depend on how the site is faring in the market. An SEO specialist can help determine what is needed by the website so that it can be search engine friendly. With topnotch options that are recommended to promote the site, you have the edge over other sites in your area of competition.

Existing market conditions will also sculpt the internet marketing plan that you site must use. Professionals in optimization know what will boost your traffic. Traffic is one determining factor in getting your sales. You need people to visit your site so that you can have better potential of getting your buyers.

Search engine optimization places your site in an advantageous position. It is like selecting the best location for your store in offline business. SEO will place you in a very strategic site so that searchers can easily find your site. This is the basic component of getting site traffic, if you are thinking of getting inexpensive traffic generation methods. Search engines have provided a lasting and a better way to gain visitors. PPC may do well, but its results cannot always be depended upon. If you are sincere in being cost-effective, SEO provides a cheap method of being found in searches. If you have been using the wrong kind of internet marketing method, it is time to switch gears. Quitting your business is not an option because there is no other way where you can find better opportunities to earn what you are aiming to get, except inside the web.

Success in business cannot be achieved in an instant. More often, those who succumb to web marketing tactics that promise immediate gain are the most likely to lose big in their investments. Paid methods of marketing may be very promising because there are certainly some companies who have made it. However, not all paid advertisements will deliver the results that are expected of them. This is the reason why you should stick to the natural and tested method of getting the visibility you need.

If you need more help in getting excellent visibility in search engines, check out www.webmarketingexperts.com.au for more tips on how to be found in searches.

Websites cannot maintain a good flow of interested readers if they offer content that are flat and plain. Good graphics and images cannot make up for good content in the pages. All form and no substance will make your site go through a hard time. The minutes that surfers spend on your site can be valuable because they have such limited reading span. So, when your first paragraph does not spark their interest, you have little chance of getting a second look at your pages.

In internet marketing, impression and appearance has significance. There are sites that provide images for their products but no descriptions. This is not good for users who want to get the best information they can in researching for products they want to purchase. The website owner must make an effort in giving the best content that can inform and entertain the visitor while they are browsing the pages. Do not waste the effort of searchers because good content has value.

Writing good content can be tedious since you need to research on topics, specifics and process a whole lot of information to come up with a good article. If you have no time to do the legwork, hire someone who has the expertise of providing content for your pages. You can also merge keywords on target into the content you want done since keyword-optimized copy is an essential of the onsite optimization process. You have to position meat and not some weak fodder for your visitors.

Writing requires logical sequencing so when you attempt to write without considering this factor, you might deliver copy that will let your readers cry to boredom. Hire someone who can do the job better and concentrate more on customer care and other business essentials.

Websites need to look good, and they need to sound good as well. Reach your audience in a more effective manner with content that speaks to them. Offer readers something that will make them alive when they come across your content.

If you need more tips on how to create good content for your site, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Now, SEO may take as short as six months or as long as a few years to produce results. It may involve link building and article submissions, among many others, to help divert traffic to your site. More traffic usually means higher ranking and higher ranking means greater visibility. If you’re seeking to improve the number of business transactions you get, then you must be visible to the public first. In doing so, you need to build up an identity over the net and make your presence known. On this area, social networking sites are of big help. With an abundance of users, you easily get to reach your target consumers. Sites like Twitter and Facebook serve as fertile grounds for launching internet marketing strategies that help increase your website’s visibility and, consequently, the visits you get and the profits you make. With the social networking sites, the task of driving more traffic to your site becomes less tedious and more interesting.

The contribution of social networking sites to search engine optimization has been very valuable in recent times. Now, online entrepreneurs have everyone in the world right at their fingertips. However, this convenience does not imply a decreased responsibility in making quality posts and blogs. The same SEO principles still apply on networking sites. The only difference they have with other sites is the number of users. So you still have to create quality web marketing strategies.

Competition is the oil that moves things forward and attain the best. There is a professional method that can be used in order to make great steps and become the leader in whatever niche you are involved in. SEO is a potent arm for online companies in the face of high competition. This is a process that is not quick to provide results but it gives substantial and long-term results.

Making users aware that you are available online is one of the best way to capture the market. Internet marketing has never been as relentless as in the current times. With recession echoes in all corners of the trade and commerce industry, companies have been feeling the hard-hitting blow of the economic downfall. So if you want to top the searches in order to get your market to easily spot you, get an SEO company to work this out for you.

The crowd is thick and to be able stand out, you must have vehicles to carry you to the top. This is how organic search engine optimization will bring change on your position in search results. Your primary aim is to attract visitors. Hence, your website must have the elements that will make if detectable by search engines and friendly for visitors as well.

If a considerable rate of traffic is achieved, the profit turnover for your business can expect to improve. Getting a good web design for your site is also one factor to consider, and it can be coupled with SEO to provide a good start for an online business. Your brand image and packaging is important so that people can immediately recall your product.

Your website is the face that you show the public. Its web design and navigation elements will contribute much to how users will like to visit your site repeatedly. However, even if these things are met, your business cannot see improvement once it is not advertised to its desired market.

Search engine optimization is the best carrier of the message when you want to capture your market. Therefore, this is not an indispensable thing because there is no other way to make your site popular. If your competition is using advanced SEO techniques, you have all the reason to get an optimization to get on with the race.

For more tips on how to make your website appear in searches, check out www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

A good SEO company knows how to approach the problem by fundamentally learning what sells to a certain crowd of consumers. There are certain keywords that spark the interest of consumers and the right keywords should be used in order to catch this crowd. Properly identified keywords allows a site to hit the right market to be tapped.

SEO experts know what a website’s accessibility can be the hindrance why search engines fail to index it. Therefore, when this is diagnosed, a set of processes will be laid down to optimize the site. An audit of the accessibility features of the website can help determine the extent of work to be done. People gather information from search engines and when you understand their likes, you can easily reach them through keywords. It is your keywords that will bring you the visibility in searches.

The ones who know optimization can research on the activity of competition websites. Their inbound link structures can be analyzed in order to make the best measures to beat the competition. These links are valuable elements for search engines since the robots rely on links they find in a site. Getting plenty of links from high ranking sources can also influence your site’s popularity. SEO professionals can create more opportunities for a site to get good links through content dissemination.

Content that is worthy of index should contain words that are related to the products that you promote. Careful research on what may work with users should be done. Sitemaps can also be optimized so that search spiders can direct their searches to your content when they are crawling the web.

Good SEO companies know that monitoring is essential in order to keep track of the site’s progress in the optimization efforts. If results are not so satisfactory, additional adjustments can be made until the proper target is achieved.

Being visible means meticulous work to dominate search engines. For more information on how to find a good SEO company to be your partner in business, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

In the search for placement, there are several internet marketing methods that have been used by trial and error process. These can be quite expensive because you have to spend literal dollars in getting some types of web marketing promotion. However, among these method, search engine optimization tops them all with regards to getting organic rankings.

Search engines are quick to index sites that are optimized. Good SEO must be practiced so that results will really be lasting. Among the best methods are:

Website Analysis- SEO will always start with this. This is the basic step to do since the optimization plan will be based on how the site will be diagnosed. SEO experts will look at the factors that need to be improved such as content, meta tags, or links. URL structure is also a factor that should be looked into and when this is deficient, changes can be made immediately. These are minor changes to do but the vital things lies in the advanced optimization tactics that are used in the later stages of the strategy.

Keyword Analysis- This is also important since this can provide an idea of what your site is about. Keywords are those that are related to your products, brand or services. Keywords are words that are typed by users as they searched for products or information on things. These words are used in ranking sites, and a foundation of a website that is well-optimized. This is a basis for all your optimization efforts.

Link Building- This is how sites get connected to other sites. A website that provides a link to your site means that it recommends you as being a worthy site to be visited by its visitors. The purpose in link building is to get links to sites that have high rankings and when this is achieved, search engines will have the impression that a site is also valuable. Sometimes, you just earn the trust of other sites so they place your link on their keywords.

Blogging- This is constant updating of content that provides information that readers love to browse. Blogs can also contain keywords on target so that it can become search-engine friendly.

SEO provides an excellent form of web marketing. The sooner you apply it to your site, the better your sales will show up.

For more information on how you can benefit from SEO, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au and learn more about SEO tactics.

Internet marketing has one area called search engine optimization that helps many online companies to get their share of the market through appearing in search pages. The competition is getting tougher and with the potent arm of SEO, any business, however small it may be, has the chance to compete with the big players. More people are using the web everyday, and there are many companies that get established, so the market is ready but the question lies in the visibility. Without the visibility factor, your investments could go to waste.

Internet business is profitable only if the right market can be tapped. In the face of many challenges, SEO has consistently proven itself to be a reliable support for businesses. Whether some may want to advance into paid web marketing methods, SEO becomes the basic structure in capturing the market. One aspect of this is called the onsite optimization plan where the website itself should contain the keywords that are relevant to the products that it promotes. With the proper set of keywords, content can be made so that searchers can easily find it through search results. Making a fresh online presence should have SEO at the start. Keywords can be blended in the content so that the optimization can advance as the stay in the web gets longer.

Therefore, in order to become profitable, search engine optimization must be applied. An added dilemma that business owners face is how to get the right partner to work on the optimization. There are plenty that like to offer web marketing promotions but there are only a few that can deliver quality results at a price that is friendly to the budget.

If you want to know more on how to become competitive in the web, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au to learn how you can increase website traffic and improve your business.

The audience is large, but the problem lies in how to get the audience to see your products. SEO is an inexpensive way of advertising, and many sites, before they proceed to get paid internet advertising, turn to SEO first to get their sites popular in the search results. SEO as an internet marketing method, however, need time in order to get results. A process that works like slow cooking but the outcome is right on target.

Traffic is important for any website. Therefore, the reason why sites clamor for search results rankings, is because, they want to be seen by the people that look for them and get these people to check out their websites. Technical skill is needed in order to get the right blend of optimization plan since different sites require different kinds of treatments. If the problem is on the pages itself, the most probable method that will be used is onsite repair, like re-doing the web design in order to fit the purposes of optimization effort. If there is less problems on the pages, an offsite promotion can be adopted to increase site traffic. Offsite work will help the website to get introduced to venues where a potential big audience can be captured. While many business owners have the capacity to establish websites, not all of them have the ability to implement their own SEO strategy. With the help of experts, your site can be optimized with a low investment capital.

All businesses, no matter what niche they belong to, need a good dose of internet marketing to be done because there is no other way that they can thrive except to get a good advertising plan to help businesses going.

If you want to know how you can make your business more profitable, contact Marketing Experts (www.webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more SEO and web marketing guides.

Merchant sites can benefit from affiliates because they do not have to invest money other than the site that they are maintaining to showcase their products. The market becomes larger for merchant sites. If more sites promote the name of a merchant site, then it has more chance of getting a better share of the market. If there are sites in the same niche that carry related products from a merchant site, the merchant can have more access to the market through several affiliate sites. This means, a better income can be generated from the joint efforts from these sites.

Affiliate sites get a good percentage from the customers they provide the merchant site and obtain 30-50% of the total sales. It is also an advantage for the customers because they do not have to give additional effort to search for the products they need. If they land on a site that offers affiliate links to products, then their search is done. The trend for buying nowadays is online, so affiliate marketing is the quickest route to getting good sales, both  for the merchant and affiliate site.

Merchant sites also get a good amount of recommendation from other sites. Their affiliates provide the go-signal for people to patronize their products and in doing so, get their earnings from their thumbs-up to visitors. They are the endorsers of a product, so there are many promoters while there is only one main provider. This eliminates further competition because a certain brand stands as the one being brought to the awareness of many.

The only thing to settle between the merchant and affiliate site, is the sharing of commissions for successful leads. Once this is ironed-out, everything will fall into place and business continues to thrive. Different sites that bring in customers can also provide feedback on things that are better needed by customers. All in all, affiliate marketing is a web marketing technique that can help everyone achieve full earning potential in the exchange.

How are you going to do optimization? Here are steps that you can use to boost your web marketing promotion:

Optimize keywords- Know which keywords your site is competing for. This is best done through a keyword analysis so that you can determine the odds you have in the whole competition.

Submission To Directories – This one method where you can advertise the name of your site and your products through free submissions to web directories.

Add Quality Content To The Site- This is a good element of a site that sells to customers. People must like what they are getting from your site, such as tips and information. Visitors go to a site because they want to learn something. If you are not giving this to them, your site will not get the attention that it needs. People like to recommend sites that are informative so give them quality readings from your pages.

Work Out Your Page Ranking- In search engine optimization, you are always concerned in working out your page rank. Without that ranking in searches, it would be hard to get the attention of users, for free. Other methods need you to invest a considerable sum in order to get advertised.

Fix Broken Links- An SEO professional can help you fix problems with your website such as broken links. When there are too many broken links, users may get annoyed because the links they click do not work. So they quickly leave the site and look for another which can load links fast. It would help if your site is tested for broken links in order to get them fixed if there are bad links.

Internet marketing has many facets and if you know how to do optimization, your site can easily catch traffic like it should.

Getting high quality traffic or improving the volume of the traffic that is directed to your website should be your first priority if you are into Internet Marketing. It is, by far, the most important strategy that can be done for an online company. While SEO primarily seeks to get a particular index by search engine crawlers, it also works to make sure that the web pages that are optimized appear on the first page of search engine results.

Beginners may find it hard to understand SEO concepts. Here are some of the basics that beginners need to know about optimization.

Page Titles

Page titles are descriptions that can be found at the top of the browser window. Having these would enable search engines to assign ranks to your web pages. Title may contain about 2 or 3 topics of keyword phrases that are relevant to your industry or business.

Link Or Anchor Text

Your text links must be both descriptive and relevant. Descriptive in a way that it gives your readers a clear picture of which page they will be directed to when they click through that text link. It should be relevant in a way that the text link contains words that somehow encompasses the content of the page that it is linked to.

Content

Search engines love content. Search engines love to crawl on big websites. And by big, we mean it has a lot of content written for various topics that are related to the industry that the website exists for.

Incoming Links

Web pages are also ranked according to the number of incoming links that it has. It is important to find out if you have enough back links. If you don’t, you need to find ways to generate back links either through link exchange or link building.

Another important strategy for internet marketing is to make sure that you keep yourself updated with the latest trends and techniques. Doing SEO is relatively easy, but it requires much effort on your part. There are always a lot of reference materials available and a lot of people to learn from. When done the right way, optimizing your web pages would surely help you gain hits, traffic, and best of all, increased revenue in due time.

Take note that it is not the price that transform industries; it is the service that is given. If you want to experience the full economic profitability behind search engine optimization, then you have to focus on the quality of work. This is what drives more web traffic to your site, helps you climb up the ranks and makes you more popular among online searchers. This is also what gives you more opportunities for business growth and development. Thus, it is rational not to disregard the quality of work SEO professionals puts into the campaign in light of the cheap fees. Corporations must understand that they are currently delving into a challenging but certainly lucrative playing field. And in as much, they must set aside their reservations regarding the task and together with SEO experts, give their best for the campaign.

Enterprises must set out a reasonable budget for SEO if they want it to effectively weigh in on business progress. Belt tightening may seem all too practical in this recession we are experiencing. But since it will take quite a while before the expected changes kick in, it is imperative that the SEO campaign is seen through without fail.

Why does it take so long, you ask? Well, for one thing, the campaign starts at zero. And amidst the inconsistencies in the web environment and the competition between other online companies, it would take a whole lot of time and effort before things come to full circle with SEO. However, this should not throw you off your seats. You are not tossing money to the wind my friend. SEO is a venture that allows you to save money on traditional media advertising while increasing your visibility among potential customers, with returns eventually multiplying out of proportion.

All that it takes is rightful discernment on the SEO consultant or firm that you tap. Set the cost aside first and research on the competencies that are needed to execute a successful web marketing campaign. Go for background, training, track record, skills and knowledge, and above all, passion. This is what you must secure out of your partnership with an SEO firm. Make sure you don’t compromise any of it for discounts. For all you now, rock-bottom prices equate to poor labor.

Therefore, one should minimize, if not avoid the following means when trying to build linkages for websites.

•    Though reciprocal links are simple to do, currently they are considered an ineffective link building technique (especially when associations are made between two low-level ranked sites). It doesn’t hold that much weight and neither does it divert significant amounts of traffic to your site.

•    Buying links may be another easy option. But aside from being expensive, a site that buys highly ranked links is subject to banishment from search engines once discovered by its algorithms.

•    Registering in forums might also be a good idea, but flooding it with link posts is not something you want to do if you desire to divert attention to your site. Aside from looking spammy, you might actually irritate people in the forum and discourage them from visiting your webpage.

The value of links does not rely on the quantity but the quality of the created connections. Moreover, it is in how these connections are made that they produce the most significant traffic for a site. One way inbound links from credible, high-ranking sites still provide the most benefit to a web page. Thus SEO experts must endeavor to collect them in order to make the link building aspect of internet marketing more reliable.

Building links must appear natural, however, if the keywords you use are competing hard for major ones, there needs to be a hands-on dedication to make contacts with sites that will link back.

The rise in your PR simply means that more visitors are coming to your site than others in your niche. Google considers high traffic sites as important and useful sites but these visitors are not aware of this. More visits create more credibility for search spiders and this can be achieved through giving fabulous contents and information that get the attention of people.

One way to establish PR is through the existence of backlinks. When high PR sites are linked to your page, you also get a pull from these websites and thus, increase your rank. Getting two links to high PR sites has more value than 10 links to low ranking sites. You can get higher with two than 10, so quantity of links do not determine high PR result.

PageRank can be improved by many supporting methods. A website can become more popular with methods that fit the type of business and industry it is involved in. These free methods can be:

Web Directory Submission- This is considered a strong method that can increase PR. This process takes time and must have quantity. Submission to several big directories is essential.

Forum Posting- Forums certainly have their use because forum commenting is one way of introducing your link to other forum members. There is a more friendly connection in forums and people can give your site the visits that you require. Leaving a signature in your comments can raise your PR, if the forum site has high rank.

Article Publishing- There are sites that allow free submission of articles. Usually, these are article marketing sites that allow authors to create a resource box where they can leave information about their products or business.

Link Exchanging- This is a win-win deal for many sites because it uses links to sites that are of the same level or even higher. Create a link to other sites that are relevant to what you offer.

It is best to follow Google’s rules. A good result can only come out of consistent and proper optimization. In time, your site’s PR can increase and this becomes the start of better things.

In search engine optimization, cost should not be the primary hindrance against optimizing your website. It is not like a consumable item that can be set aside once the cost does not fit the budget.

If companies know that search engine optimization in a technique that deals with organic ranking, then each one would like to get an optimization strategy. Organic ranking can drive relevant traffic that will convert and bring revenue. Therefore, getting organic listing would be a step towards the goals that a company has formulated.

Getting the kind of SEO that can be called high quality is uncommon. SEO is an underrated ability however, it can give a transformation that a business needs, and make it a more profitable endeavor. Its economics is better than the conventional expenses on advertising. This promotion strategy have not been valued by management executives and as such, their companies are missing a lot of good pull that optimization can provide. Executives more often do not give weight to SEO as a suitable internet marketing method.

It is imperative to educate companies on the value of SEO, and the benefits that it provides as a web marketing technique. The implications of optimization in business are far-reaching, and one of these good points is the zero cost for each visitor received in the long run. In the face of recession, many companies are getting lower and lower revenue. If business executives realize the power of search optimization, then constant flow of revenue can be maintained or even exceed the targets. Websites that are in their slow-down stage should make use of SEO because it is brilliant pull marketing. Gaining the top ranks in a niche takes hard work, and a good optimization can outperform even the leaders in the niche.

Educating people on the long-term benefits of SEO can be a long haul yet, but it would help many businesses to be more profitable. They have to be informed that this is the kind of promotion that is not only low-cost but also enduring. If website owners and executives know that they are on the winning edge with SEO, they would not think twice in getting an optimization plan that will help them to cope with the demands of the times.

Sitemaps are not a new thing since it has existed for a long time already. This is a part of the whole SEO process. It is a recent decision by search engines to take notice of sitemap submissions because it helps them to crawl a site on a frequent basis, and sitemaps assist search robots to locate these pages. Your internet marketing expert knows how to create a sitemap for your site in order to improve your position in search engines.

In the intricate world of web marketing, sitemaps are an important element of the whole SEO strategy because they give the information to search engines on pages that can be inspected. It is an XML file that contains all the URLs that can be found in a website, complete with the meta tags of each page. Search engines are given an easy way to index a site. Sitemaps also help web crawlers to determine what pages have been linked from other sites. It supplies that data to search crawlers, including the changes and updates that have been made in a site.

A good sitemap should contain all the pages that are included in your site, and those that are hidden pages. It can be done by hand to make sure that all of these can be crawled but there are also online sitemap tools that can help you accomplish this. A sitemap can be helpful for search crawlers if it the site has original and dynamic content. Furthermore, if your site contains AJAX or flash files, search bots take a harder time to crawl a page; the sitemap becomes the guide.

A new site with few links can be unnoticed by search engines, so a sitemap has to be there in order to hint these search engines that you actually exist. It also helps if your site has plenty of pages and these pages are not linked well with each other or not at all. It does not however, make a guarantee that search engines will rank it, but it is a tool that will give hint for search engines to do their crawling job in less time required.

There are countless annoying habits that can be observed in how people deal with their followers. Try not become a social irritant by doing these steps:

Sincerity In Communication- Are you someone who hides behind a name? People will have a hard time connecting with your message when you are an “unknown”, hiding behind some image like “CoolDatingGuru” or “Miss Marketing Giant”. These are impersonal titles. If you want to have meaningful relationships with followers, make it appear that you’re someone with a human name.

Use Free Messaging Channels- For Internet users, there are various IM channels that allow you to connect with people on a more personal basis. It doesn’t hurt to chat with people, and this genuine effort of connecting with them is most likely to be appreciated. You can have a personal one-on-one contact with them and they can be politely asked for favor to share your information with others.

Respect The Social Media - Cross connections can mess up the purpose. If you are using Twitter, it would not bring a very positive impression when you are trying to aggressively promote Facebook on your Tweets. It can bring confusion to people because they have likely joined the site to discover more on the advantages it can give them. When you are trying to stray them from getting a clear message, you could get more negative reactions and lose potential connections. Know the ethics; a particular social media is used because people would probably like to enjoy the site. Trying too hard to get ahead of everyone is a no-no! Be natural.

Balance Giving & Receiving – Social media sites are two-way lanes, where people can interact with enjoyment. You encounter people who are great in taking favors from others. This can be overdone by some, or it can also be you, to the extent of becoming annoying to others in the circle. When you are being so irritating by appearing so needy for votes or wanting them to read your stories without their solicitation, they can avoid you more passionately. Be spontaneous because your constant repetition is a threat to the sanity of your social media friends.

Business is about being trustworthy and reliable. If you show them that you are partial in some things, it can hurt your business. Follow these guidelines to help your business grow. Use social media to your advantage!

There are two kinds of organic optimization, the off-page and on-page optimization processes. An SEO company can do this kind of legwork for your business. If you need an Internet marketing promotion, SEO is so far the best foundation that you can get to make things work for your business. Aside from the benefits, this is also a low-cost method. If you recognize that your raising popularity is a crucial element in online success, then optimize your site!

On-page optimization deals with changing web site codes as well as the content, basically through keyword research. The most applicable keywords that describe your business need to be in the content that you place in your pages. When you display information, make sure that it is useful for readers and attractive to search engines. The code contains keywords in meta tags and used in the title bar of the home page. Then, if you want to have many pages, make the content use the best keywords. It is also recommended that you use a single keyword on target per page.

Off-page optimization is done by creating back links with good sites. A one-way link is favorable for your site since reciprocal links can only clutter the route. Your site would need to get linked from a high-traffic website.

Why choose a high traffic site? This is where you can capture your visitors too since these visitors, when they are inside that site, may click on links that lead to your site. Then people will find themselves browsing through products in your site, through the link they found in another site. One-way links are preferred by Google, so get the most relevant keyword to use in your code and content.

Having a sound web marketing plan is all you need to get the ball rolling again. Make it easy for your market to reach you. Get ranked in search engines!

Search engine optimization and social media can be a good mixture of Internet advertising process to increase site traffic. Any business needs to thrive inside the web, therefore, using SEO and SMM as web marketing methods consistently can help it realize its objectives. Links can easily be passed from one user to another if people like the content that they get from a site.  It can connect many users at one time, and a mix of these social sites can be utilized for online promotion. Therefore, a viral marketing process can readily be achieved and many people throughout the Internet will access your site.

In media marketing, branding must be the first thing to consider. With a carefully planned promotion, ensure that a brand can be seen in every online promotion especially among social media sites. Sites can easily rank as well because search engines give weight to these social sites when indexing. Thus, implementing SMM-SEO can help a business reach its competitive edge.

In finding the right web marketing process, make sure that social media marketing is involved in it. However, secluding SEO from social media can make it a weaker method and vice versa because almost everybody can be found in many of these social sites. That makes it easier to reach that target crowd. These two must work hand in hand to reach the goals that a website has already defined. Social media can be considered the extra mile on optimization and this powerful blend of strategies will make any advertising campaign get better results.

Getting qualified service from an SEO company can help an online company get listed in major search engines, like Yahoo, Bing & Google. There is chance that you can get your site to the position you want to occupy in terms of ranking. As business productivity is on target, optimizing a site is one of the most practical things that can be done. Thus you can let your identity reach a global level.

Being competitive in the market does not only mean that your products are superior. There are other factors that come into play when you want your products to become a household name. Take advantage of this cheap strategy in web marketing. An optimized site has higher percentage of failure. Not all of so-called web marketing methods can be feasible but SEO is so far the most widely used by companies. Some of these techniques involve the following:

•    Content Optimization
•    Directory Submission
•    Link Building
•    Blogs
•    Keyword Analysis
•    Maintenance Of Ranking Report

These methods are imperative processes if a business wants to increase traffic to its site. On-page and off-page optimization can increase online visibility. Hire a competent web marketing provider so that you can be sure that you can benefit from every process that is applied on your site. Be competent online with an optimized site!

For more ideas on search engine optimization, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

An SEO strategy is focused in getting traffic, which is measurable through site visits. However, this is not where the money-making is found but it can help in initiating sales conversions. Some influential techniques in a strong SEO strategy will involve these:

Content – There are some who want to overlook this aspect of internet marketing because content creation is not a very easy thing to accomplish. Some may dismiss this as something unimportant. Big companies may rely much on their brands and product photos but the site that has carefully placed detailed information can help their customers reach a decision immediately. You need to inform your readers on what your product is about and this would become easier for you to get conversion.

Keyword – Always have it in mind that you are optimizing your site against competition, and the keywords will help the work of search engines easier. That means, these robots can find your site quickly and index it. Without the keyword analysis, you will be lost in the competition.

Call To Action – This is where you can test your readers whether they will really respond to the information that you have laid in your content. The call to action is like a subtle command that you’d like your customers to do in order to progress to the conversion. What do you want your readers to do? Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter or order your product? Make a call to action that will make them respond to your message.

An SEO strategy uses practical methods to attract both people & spiders, and when done correctly can launch the business into the level that it wants to attain.

Almost every week, there is an online marketing product launching due to an increasing, unstoppable demands. Promoting these products through affiliate marketing is a surefire income generating tactic for those who make living through the internet. Here are the steps.

(a) Study the information that the product owner provides. If you have some clarifications of some vague information details, asking the owner would not do any harm. Product owners, even if they are not obliged to spoon-feed everything for you as an affiliate partner, are helpful because it is their business that you are promoting.

(b) Remember and jot down both advantages and disadvantages of the product. Most of the product reviews existing today are too pretentious of not presenting any of the weak points of the product. However in the process of writing the product review, you must highlight the good points. Mention the weak points, not to the point of destroying the image of the product.

…continue reading here: 4 Steps in Doing Internet Marketing Product Reviews Part 2

The belief that linking out or having outbound links would also diminish the value of your site that would result to lower ranking in the search listing is not true. It may diminish your link juice and may cause the decrease of your page rank but your search listing position can’t be lowered.

Outbound linking is a charity. You contribute links to other sites, giving out your link juice to them. You are voting them to increase their link popularity. So, what good would outbound links give for your site? There is good with linking out especially if you do it carefully and appropriately.

Through linking out to other sites that are unquestionably relevant to yours, you are also boosting the relevance and usefulness of your site for search engine users. Google measures the site importance for certain keywords through the site relevance and usefulness of links, both inbound and outbound.

Outbound links also helps boost your visibility for local search. For instance, if your business is a fashion boutique in California, you can also link out to sites that offer the same service within California.

Not to mention, linking out can actually boost your page rank. However, it greatly matters on the relevance of the websites that you link out.

There are already thousands of online marketing businesses in the internet who can attest the effectiveness of local search. In the past, yellow pages dominate the local search industry. With the advent of the local search feature of the search engines, businesses that operate online must employ local search optimization if they want to generate more returns on investment.

Yellow pages’ popularity is beginning to decline today because most of the businesses are opting for local search. This is good news for online entrepreneurs and bad news for owners of yellow pages. (chukles)

Google’s also popular product is Google Maps. Submitting your business information through Google Local such as phone number, street address and other details, you get more visibility. As a result, the potential customers won’t be having problems with locating your business establishment. A very precise map is provided through Google Maps. Yahoo also ventures in this kind of service feature. It is named Yahoo Local. Bing has also its own version called Bing Local.

Search analysts declared that the decision engine will revolutionize the current search engine optimization trends. Aside from the listing of websites that appear on the search results for particular keyword, there are subcategories as options for a more profound search results. This means that search engine optimizers have to adjust their techniques in terms of optimizing web content according to subcategories instead of keywords alone. For instance, when you research about a celebrity by keying in the name, you are not just given with website listing. On the top of search listing, you can see other subcategories such as News, Images, Videos, Biography and Popular as the default. This kind of search, however, works only of you are looking for notable or famous entities such as musicians, celebrities, politicians and bloggers.

Learning SEO is also not limited to web designers or web developers. Building search engine-friendly sites is important and such is their responsibility. The existence of website would be useless without having to generate a little web traffic, relevant visitors or not. There are already billions of sites indexed by search engines. How would you rank above all else?

You should avail web design service that also includes onsite optimization. Onsite optimization is as important as other internet marketing strategies. If you fail to make a website that is optimization-ready, the rest of the SEO techniques would not work; in the end, your entire online marketing business fails.

SEO is important because the billion internet users around the world visit websites not through typing the site URL in the address bar of the browser. They find websites they are looking for through search engines. This is the reason why there are lots of web entrepreneurs who prioritize the investment of this particular web tactic for their site. Higher ranking in the search engine results for the right keywords is half way towards ultimate success.

There are four kinds of article write ups that are effective in drawing targeted web traffic because internet users love reading them.

(a) How To Article = Articles of this type always attract internet users because people normally have the innate desire to know everything. How To articles are their best tools to satisfy that desire. Learning is a continuous process that never ends and this is what makes this article type to continue being read. This works well for your online marketing business.

(b) List Article = List article is the easiest way to write. You only have to write the description of what the list is all about and then post the bullets. You have the option to make it more informative by giving details for every bullet.

(c) Review Article = Review articles on products are important for every storefront website. Potential customers do not only search for products and buy them right away; they often research for information about the product. With review articles, the potential customers’ researching task would come to an end and finally buy the product that best fit for them.

Just recently, Microsoft launched its new search engine as a response to the demands Google’s seemingly unbeatable place on the top. They call it “Bing.” There’s nothing extraordinary with the name really. However, it is more likely as good as Google when it comes to delivering search results–even better than Yahoo. There was even a survey in which users were asked which results they prefer would give better search results through BlindSearch. BlindSearch is an experimental site for search engine taste test. The search listing that Bing gives is better than Yahoo; however, Google search results are still far better than the two.

With the advent of Bing search engine, there are rumors that Google fears of losing some market shares. People are expecting that Bing will dominate few market shares on internet search business. There is no clear word from Google about the matter. But one thing is certain; Google is further improving their service as a response to the existence of Bing.

Internet users today still opt for Google when researching either for information or products/service. In my own view, Bing is not a threat to Google. It is already a giant and there’s no way that other existing search engines can beat it down.

Keywords hold half the bulk of your web content. Before any article is written, the keyword or set of keywords are already established. They are chosen to serve as foundations of your website. They are what distinguish you from other websites, so to speak. It is through keywords that searchers find your site and services on the internet. Therefore, the right keywords should be used, in the right prominence and with the right density (5 to 25%), in order to route a bulk of web traffic to your site.

But no amount of keywords would be effective enough in SEO if not complemented by relevant inbound linkages. Link building helps websites rank higher in search engines, making them more popular among browsers. Often times, the type of link you use to drive traffic to a site (one-way or multi-way) and how you strategize the location of the link, determines the number of searchers you will attract, and consequently, the profits you will reap. Links are made through directory submissions, blog and forum postings, videos, images, o RSS feeds, among many others.

A website owner can solicit professional SEO services in order to fully benefit from the effects of proper keyword and link usage. There are companies that offer owners content writing and link building services at specific rates. They aim to amplify and maintain your online presence by increasing your site’s page ranking, and boosting its popularity among web browsers, with the prospect of improving your business and future sales.

SEO article writers think the stuffing their write up with lots of keywords they are optimizing the site with is the best method of drawing spiders’ attention. The truth is that this is not the case. Search engine spiders are a lot different now. Their behavior has changed drastically. It happened when there was also a drastic increase of spammers in the internet. The crawlers can now easily detect an article that is merely for the purpose of getting it ranked higher among the search engines. They are usually not crawled, or if crawled, they are flagged as spam article. As a result, no one will find it in the search engine results page. The recent trend is all about quality. Only quality articles are rewarded with higher ranking in the search engine listing for organic search.

Even if the search engine spiders are now getting smarter, you can also be smarter than them by allowing yourself to explore easier ways of getting the job done–certainly, not through spamming. Let me give you the simple steps in making the SEO article writing tasks easy.

To know the easy step for article writing, click: 5 Smart Steps for Easy SEO Article Writing

Affiliate marketing process is done by posting ads on another website. When the link is clicked by a visitor, it leads to another website. For instance, you visit a website about dresses and all those sorts. That website has advertising banner about shoes or just merely a link located on the side (some are at the top or at the bottom) of the web page. Shoes and dresses come together so the existence of that link is not a question. It is important to consider always the relevancy aspect when doing affiliate marketing. Each click count has corresponding price. The website that serves as an affiliate partner (the one that post the ad link) is rewarded with a compensation being agreed prior the posting of link.

Several businesses take risk on venturing this kind of internet marketing strategy. However, if you want also to use this as your add up marketing technique, you should be careful and wise. Get affiliate partners that are relevant to your online business. If you happen to get one that is not related to your business, worse if that site offers porn services, your affiliate marketing venture would fail. You may get tons of traffic but you would not get any conversions.

But before you begin doing the different SEO strategies, you first need to know that SEO techniques can be categorized into two: white hat and black hat.

White hat techniques are those that are approved by search engines. Black hat techniques, as you may have guessed, are the exact opposite.

Although black hat optimization can produce results faster than when you use white hat techniques, improving site rankings using the former can result to your site getting penalized. Your rankings would either be reduced or worse, your site information can get permanently banned from their database. This will be done by the search algorithms themselves or a representative from a particular search engine company may conduct a manual site review to point out your deceptive practices. I’m sure you don’t want to lose your online credibility that fast so you better make sure your internet marketing strategies do not go beyond the rules set by search engine companies.

If you are going to do SEO and internet marketing, you better do it right. Or you can always ask web marketing experts. They’re pretty easy to find. Actually, they’re all over the web.

Here are some of the benefits you can get in writing SEO articles.

(a) You can attract more traffic for your business website. This can happen if you have written your SEO article at best. It should be of quality and must be interesting to read. Relevance is not enough; above all, it should be interesting to read not only to the human eyes, but to the search engine eyes as well.

(b) If you have made your write up well, you give impressions to your reader that you are an expert of your chosen market niche. As a result, people will be following you, searching for you and your service or product. That’s a great factor in increasing your returns on investment.

(c) Over a period of time, you can compile your articles and make it an e-book. You have also the choice in publishing them as a book that you can sell through bookshops. As of now, there are very few books that tackle about internet marketing in the bookstores. So, you have the chance of selling it offline and that’s an additional income on your part.

(d) If the people find your article and see you as a credible writer and online marketer, they will make repost your article on their site. As a result, you get popular on the internet with just an effort of writing.

Advertising: Web marketing is business promotion. Advertising your business, your product or service is the first and important process to think about. Success can only be attained if you have done this process well. It is very rare to make the advertising perfect; however, spending time to create a name for your business by making it visible in the internet through search engines, the effort would be paid well. Search engine optimization and paid advertising are the two most practiced and effective web marketing strategies so far. SEO helps boost your online visibility to get traffic and conversions by making your site get higher ranking in the search engine listing. Your appearance is achieved organically. On the other hand, paid advertising which is also commonly termed as Pay Per Click or PPC helps online visibility by having a specific appearance or placement outside the search engine listing. Websites that avails PPC are seen either on the top of organic listing or at the side of that listing.

Continue reading here: 3 Must-know Process of Web Marketing (Part 2)

Since Twitter is already a proven effective tool for web marketing, every web marketing professional is using it. They integrate Twitter as another social media tools to generate web traffic and sales for their business. However, the effectiveness of Twitter marketing depends on how you use it.

Getting more followers is good. It can be attained by setting an automaton through a web tool that’s increasingly available. Having a considerably big number of followers creates impression to people that you must be of something valuable in your chosen field. However, impressions are not the basis of success. You must have followers that would engage in whatever you tweet. Most of them are people who naturally follow you. Some followers are just automated and are not really interested in you.

Twitter can influence your internet marketing venture. Through retweeting, you can already have unlimited opportunities of getting potential customers. For instance, you got 100 natural followers or the ones that follow you because they are interested about your tweets and the service or product that you offer: these 100 followers would most likely retweet your links. The followers of those 100 followers you have could have 50-1000 or more, then those people would also retweet that, your tweet would certainly spread anywhere. One thing is certain; you get more web traffic for your site. Though it may not be certain to that you get customers right away with this method, the privilege to be exposed in wide audience is already great. It starts there, getting more web traffic for more chances of getting more potential customers.

Here are tips on making your Twitter marketing successful:

* Tweet with one thought. Complicated tweets, or the ones that are technical or the ones that expresses several ideas are most likely ignored. As a result, no one would like to click any URL that you post.

* Make a simple tweet. In few words, you must express passion, focus and intention clearly.

* Spend effort in retweeting. Even if you retweet the tweets of others who are not following you will appreciate what you do. They would most likely follow you as a payment of gratitude. If they don’t still follow you, they will repay your good deeds in other ways such as advertising your link to their followers.

* Do not just read information, be it in a form of news or videos of any topic. Create and share would help a lot.

* Get to the point when tweeting. You have to put in mind that when you tweet, it should be something that you want to share and avoid getting round-the-bush.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Google Wave will be more than just a communication tool and even beyond what email can do. It is created by the people who also created Google Maps and some guys from Sydney.  Unifying the communication on the web is its main concept.

What are the features of Google Wave that we see beneficial?

Google Wave is a hybrid of web chat, IM, email, and PMS or project management software. Here are what emails and other web communication tools cannot do that Google Wave does: it can reply conversations because it has the ability to record the entire communication sequence–not just word by word but also character by character. Since the discussions in Google Wave are live, you would be able to see the blinking of the cursor of the one you are talking to as well the encoding per character of that person on the web. Now, who would stand against these great features so far? However, there are only two questions that people are asking–when exactly it should be publicly available? Will it be as user-friendly as email?

Uploading of files is made easier with Google Wave. From desktop or from any file locations or folders, you can drag attachments into Google Wave so that anyone in the conversation will receive them. This Google tool simply allows its users to build their own wave system. In terms of accessibility and usability, no doubt that it will serve the users efficiently.

Google Wave will be the next killer app for the century. Hopefully, I won’t get disappointed.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Search engine optimization are usually about building links for your site and making your site search engine friendly while also user-friendly to get higher ranking in the search engine results page. Since SEO industry is growing bigger and bigger today, SEO has become even more than what we used to think it covers. Video marketing is also covered as one of the SEO strategies. Its purpose is not just to build links for the site naturally but more importantly, to get voluminous traffic. Actually, just to make things clear about the benefits that video marketing can give to your business, let me enumerate the three: (a) inbound links, (b) web traffic, and (c) higher ranking in search engine results pages.

When you incorporate video marketing as another SEO strategy, expect that in few times to wait, you’ll get more links, more traffic and higher ranking in the search engine results page happening all at once.

How can SEO be the answer to dying businesses?

Search engine optimization helps businesses of any kind to save their expenses while getting more returns on investment. Nothing is as more effective than any other cost-saving methods as SEO. The purpose of SEO is to sell your service or product online through visibility in major search engines for keyword phrases that are customer targeting. SEO is cheap and that’s what matters about this online marketing strategy.

The very first thing you have to worry about is the selecting of best SEO company. You have to do a lot of research in order to come up with the best decision. Best decision is to select excellent SEO company that would cater all your online business promotion needs. You may ask other companies which are in good relationship with you about SEO companies they have hired. Perhaps, you may contact several SEO companies and conduct an interview with them. Ask for their output as an assurance that they are good in this particular business realm.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Here is the enumeration of SEO Dos (a-e) and Don’ts (f-g):

(a) You must perform keyword research in order to determine which keyword phrases will best sell your products or services. You should do it carefully and intensively. Your keyword targeting would be not as difficult as doing the task manually with Google AdWords, WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery and other prominent tools useful in keyword research process. This will help you to determine the value of a keyword such as diamond jewellery online over diamond.

This task is important in order to have the key. The process is like searching a diamond key in the vast world of the infinite digital ocean. They keywords serve as the key to open the treasure chest which would be the unlimited opportunities for your business. If you have generated the right keywords for your site, the optimization process would be performed smoothly. You would know that you are on the right track if you see your business generating more and more returns on investment.

Continue reading here: SEO Dos and Don’ts (Part 2)- webmarketingexperts.com.au

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Webmaster is outdated. That is what everyone is shouting today. The word webmaster came about as a website administrative contact in the early days. The tasks that were used to do by a webmaster included updating the site pages by adding content or adding pages, answers webmaster@yourdomain.com, maintains the server and other related tasks. Only one person did all these tasks before because the tasks were not as huge and difficult as today. The reason would be the fact that websites did not get any good returns on investment for several companies.

As time went by, the World Wide Web is getting more intricate. The tasks are getting more difficult and even bigger. One person cannot do tasks such as markup, programming, graphic or web designing, content writing and editing, internet marketing, information layout and many others. Each of the mentioned tasks is complicated that there should be one person to specialize each task.

Today, we use webmaster when we actually refer to someone who updates the technical part of a website. Most often, they are called web developer or web designer. Webmaster can no longer exist because the tasks that should be assigned to him or her are impossible to be accomplished.

Contact Web Marketing Experts, an Australian SEO Company for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Relevant, useful and information-rich search results are what internet users often serve as the basis of the effectiveness of a search engine. So far, only Google has met this standard. Since Yahoo and MSN are still not good in delivering totally quality search results, they are left behind by Google in hundred miles in terms of market share.

Since 2008, there are already several speculations about the 2009 SEO trends. Those speculations were proven to happen in 2009 and continue to occur. Let me present the enumeration of events about 2009 SEO trends:

(a) Google is still the most preferred search engine by internet users, resulting to its unbeatable reigning in market share. Since Google is still on top of internet search race, it is important to optimize your site for Google. Though the competition in this arena is really tough, you will be rewarded with immeasurable opportunities.

Continue reading here: 2009 SEO Trends: A View by webmarketingexperts.com.au (Part 2)

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

You only need to enter a key phrase into the search engine search bar to realize that a myriad of websites are currently crammed up over the internet. Thus, if you put up a site that will promote your business today, the chance for you to get your site on the first page of Google’s search results will be slim if you will not do SEO.

Search engine optimization is a technique that internet marketers use in order to make sure that their products and services will be found by their market. In order to do this, businessmen make sure their site will be indexed by search engine robots by optimizing site content and building offsite links. The key to doing this is primarily the selection of keywords that are to be optimized. These set of keywords and keyword phrases will be used when re-doing content, writing blogs and articles that will contain links to the site that is being optimized, and these should also be found in bookmarks, blog comments, and directory submissions.

If you are yet to acquaint yourself with the intricacies of SEO but you need to get instant web marketing results, then you need an expert to do the job for you. Contact a web marketing expert today!

Showcasing your website with images and flash gimmicks can attract attention but with the lack of useful web pages, still your site can end up stagnant. Before even starting to formulate ideas for your website, you must consider to address the needs of users first. A good website design results in an effective performance. The best thing to consider is to meet the basic requirements of a search-engine friendly website as well as a user-friendly one. Meeting user expectation is seen as an essential component if one has to direct traffic to a site and gain high search engine rankings.

When it comes to having an effective website design, the degree of consideration on the attractive design must be as valid as having useful and reliable information included in the content because this in the information that users receive. Having an honest review about your product and services is beneficial if you must capture the attention of possible customers. In order to be successful in doing online marketing, consider the basics of attraction marketing. There are plenty of useful techniques to draw user attention since  people access the internet always but bear in mind to avoid using those that mislead users. Building trust with possible customers will reward your business in no time.

The web design and layout is the fundamental consideration when venturing on internet marketing. It should have strong foundation. The foundation includes the quality of content, the attractiveness of the entire design, the placement of navigation links, and many others.

In order to enhance the marketing potential of your website, you should employ SEO for it. According to SEO professionals, optimization is not about playing games with search engine spiders and search engine exploitation; it is about building further the foundation of your site.

The entire web design depends on what type of website you would like to create. This factor is also the basis for the behavior of your target audience. The types of websites are business to business, business to customers, publisher, education and many more. You will be targeting by variation of minor, but also play important role, factors such as gender, age, interests, level of education and others.

When the strong information architecture of the site is met, you will see that your site will have better generation of traffic, better ranking in the search engine results pages.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

People are getting nastier as a response to a getting tougher competition in SEO industry. Another result that the situation gives is the contagious myths that are already widespread. To stop those myths, they should be known. Knowledge is everything; only in knowing what these myths are that we can stop this worsening condition of SEO industry competition.

Myths are meant to be myths and forever will remain false. However, if you lack the knowledge about a certain matter, you would not know which is right or wrong. If you are told about myths that you are not particular of, you would think that it is a fact. Here are some common myths about SEO company.

(a) Best SEO can guarantee higher ranking in the SERP for a short period of time.

Several SEO companies are boasting about their guarantees. Guarantees such as having your freshly created website rank in a week of link building or getting your site the top 1 ranking in a month is merely a hoax. No one can do that because the results of SEO can only be achieved in at least six months. Six month span of time is not even a confirmed truth. It is just a scientific assumption by SEO professionals who have been studying the behavior of major search engines in the internet. Continue reading here: About SEO Myths: Views from webmarketingexperts.com.au (Part 2)

Twitter is another social media that is defined as “a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” (Twitter)

It allows users (following and followers) to send and read the 140-character updates of other users called “tweets.” Tweets can be anything that users want to say aside from saying what they are doing at the moment. One can have tweets in a form of a link of interesting sites videos or images, a link of newly posted blog entry, a link of an article and many others. Others can also post ads. This is very interesting, isn’t it?

The main reason why Twitter is useful in SEO is that Google and other major search engines crawls on tweet updates of Twitterers across the world. It is not yet proven if links posted in tweets can be credited as inbound links but there are assumptions that they are ranking booster. One benefit is guaranteed to be certain, that is the chances of getting higher amount of web traffic. If you have established good relationships with your “followers,” asking them a favor such as “retweeting” your tweet which has link in it would just be easy. In a way, Twitter is a tool in viral marketing.

Tweet now! Or you’ll be left out.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (www.webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Of course, it is advantageous to all in having search engines that deliver relevant search results; this does not exclude the SEO industry. With quality organic search results, the competition in the SEO industry has become fair. Using the keyword spamming as a tactic would have you penalized or banned from search engines. However, the importance of keywords for search engine optimization is not devalued with this event. Keywords still play an important role. However, keywords should be used with a sense. This means that if you put them in your web content, you have to make sure that they are syntactically and semantically in coherence with the rest of the words in a sentence or paragraph. Besides, you also have to consider the keyword density, when it exceeds from the limit, you are automatically accused of spamming. So, what’s the acceptable keyword density by the way? It is believed that enough keyword density should be five to nine percent of the entire web content. Just to be safe, five percent keyword density is recommended.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (www.webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

Playing nasty would be the answer by some irresponsible search engine optimization companies. They think that black hat SEO strategies would have their company lead in the competition. This may some times work. However, if gets caught by the search engines, every thing would just be put into waste. For Web Marketing Experts, a black hat SEO strategy is definitely not an option. The company has done a lot in the previous times until now to preserve its reputation in ethical SEO practices only. If I were to be asked what would be the key to lead in the competition, I would say that excessive effort on ethical SEO practices is the answer. Much and much efforts are to be done. Since the process really takes time, one needs to be patient. Speaking of patience, it is one of the main virtues that the company possessed, second to honesty.

Everyone is looking for cheap services. While service providers are looking for customers that pay bigger than anyone else. This is the common contradiction between customers and service providers. WME is not a contradiction to customers because we offer low cost SEO services at prices that customers would love.

It is important to consider a balance between traffic generation and competition. You need to be user friendly as well as search engine friendly. The best thing about niche blogging is that it caters to certain interests which the viewing public may find interesting. In this way, shared interest will then create better interaction turning visitors to potential paying customers and creating natural and organic traffic necessary for search engine optimization.

Being specific is very important when you consider niche blogging. Since not all sites shares the same interest, competition will be lesser giving you more chances of optimizing search engines. You must also consider interesting topics to catch the attention of the millions of people who access the internet each day. In order to know what aspects in your site needs improvement, spare some space where people can place comments in such a way you will be able to address what they really want.

The best way to generate visitors to your site and to have it optimized in search engines is to regularly update pages with topics of your forte. If your interest is all about exotic insects, then right about entomology topics. This is one good start to promote your website.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au ) for more relevant information.

Here are some benefits that your websites can avail with the optimization process:

•    Quick and easy access to your website
•    High chances of website’s visibility to major search engines
•    Attracting possible customers
•    An increase in repeat customers
•    Long-term high site rankings

The effective methods that SEO use can surely get your website on top. As the online marketing competition is getting tougher each day, unique optimization methods are also being acquired. The success of your online business though does not solely depend on the optimized search engine rankings. It is rather acceptable to say that SEO aids your business in realizing its goals than they will make your business successful. A well designed website along with high quality and excellent content has a lot more to do as compared to any other aspects.

Directing customers to your site is not as easy as you think. Many aspects are taken into consideration thus making things complicated. Keep updating your web pages and be sure that fresh and original contents are posted. This tactic will also help you in generating potential customers and increase your online business’ sales along the way.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more SEO tips and other related useful information.

SEO consultants are people who are well-acquainted with anything about search engine optimization. Most of them have plunged in to study the search engines, how they work, and how would websites rank among these search engines. Of course, no one can be called an expert unless the person has undergone years of experience of a particular niche–in this case, SEO.

Majority of the websites in the internet are actually doing search engine optimization. This is the effective way of making the website visibility among major search engines come into place. Online visibility is gained by optimizing the site for particular keyword phrases; this is what SEO consultants are aiming to provide to their clients. They analyze the site and give suggestions or recommendations on what particular SEO strategies are needed to increase the ranking of the website in major search engine listings. Even if SEO consultants have full grasp about the behavior of search engines, they do not, however, have enough knowledge about the exact blue print of search engine algorithm.

Oftentimes, SEO consultants study the client site first. This is to check if the site to be optimized is SEO-ready. They take responsibilities on redesigning the site if necessary to make it search engine–friendly. Their other tasks include optimizing the site with tactics that they think fit to have the website ranking improved.

Contact Web Marketing Experts (webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more effective SEO tips and other related useful information.

Optimizing images for search engines is also an important task to maximize the SEO campaign. Images, especially the clickable ones, can draw web traffic and links for your site. Since people have short attention span, images are great ways to get their attention.

Here are some great ways to ethically optimize images of your site:

(a) Use Alt Attribute appropriately: The alt text is important for both search engine robots and for users. It serves as the description that would appear just in case the image can’t be seen. The description should be descriptive of what the image is all about. Avoid stuffing your image description with keywords that deviate from what the image really is. If you do that, Google will penalize you for that. Don’t forget, however, that the description should be readable in the eyes of your site visitors.

(b) Have credible/authoritative hosting site for images: Some of the reputed image hosting sites are Photobucket, Flickr, Picasa (of Google), and Wikipedia. Don’t forget to link back your images being placed in those images hosting site to your own site.

Read more here: Top 10 Optimizing Tips for Images (Part 2)

Black hat SEO techniques are used by several internet marketers who play nasty. “Bad internet marketers” dominate the search engine results most of the time because of their spamming techniques. Their sites get higher ranking while the credible and legitimate websites are ranking in the SERP just below them. This condition is really unfair for other internet marketing who are doing their job ethically.

Even if Google updates its search ranking algorithm, the spammers still find their way to get through Google’s “iron hand.” Just recently, these spammers have become disturbingly effective once again. Lots of internet users and even occasional web surfers trust Google search engine. This is the reason why Google has to pursue the changing of search engine algorithm.

Google is accepting the fact that it is really difficult to do tasks at the same time–combating the internet spammers while giving internet users with fresh and timely search results. However, they are now exerting efforts in changing the search algorithm for a more refined, totally spammer-free search results; this would help the internet marketing venture a bias-free business field. The time when it shall happen remains a question though.

There are various reasons why people start their own blog. Others may use it to promote their business or an agenda. Concerned citizens who work for the improvement of life also use this modern method in educating people about certain issues happening these days. For whatever reasons you may have for blogging like for search engine optimization or just to share some thoughts or ideas, content matters a lot.

The news is definitely a recourse for the many who wants to catch a good topic to write about depending on the niche of your blog. In taking care of the seemingly insatiable informative needs of the public, it is better that you write something that piques their interest as this will generate traffic for search engine optimization. If there’s none that you consider fitting for your blog, consider a wider scope. From the local news, try considering the national or international news.

If none of the news seems to help, consider the things that you have been up to like the movie that you just saw, a conversation with a friend or a nice song that you just have heard and many more. Always bear in mind that blogging is all about sharing opinions. If you can’t think of anything else to write about, try using the visuals. There are also people who seem interested in figures than in words.

(a) Mutual linking or link exchange is not already encouraged due to its potential to abuse the privilege on links. However, this can be beneficial if the two parties linking to each other are related. To make this strategy work, you must do link exchange only with industry related websites.

(b) Search engines love text and more information. Thus, you must satisfy them with informative text. It is not enough that your storefront, which is your website, contains the image and description about the product. You must also include information about what benefits it can give and the instruction in order to let the customers know on how to maximize its use. You may include history if necessary.

(c) Keywords are the keys for visitors to get to your site. That is why keyword research is very important. It is not enough to use only competitive keywords that keyword tools suggest; you have to think like an internet shopper. That way, you can think of what possible words or phrases are most likely keyed in the search bar of search engines.

…continue reading here: More SEO Tips to Learn (Part 2)

Mutual linking with industry-related websites, making your site informative, and doing the right keyword research are important in SEO. However, you must also know how to optimize your site with on-page optimization process.

(d) Web page title is important and the content. This is the basis of ranking your site according to relevant keyword phrases. That is why making it unique is a must. You can get away with search engines because even if your site content may just be the same with others but written in your own words, search engine robots will not know. However, you will be having problems with your visitors. Visitors are humans and have brains; they certainly will know if your site is unique or a copycat.

Since search engines rank web pages and not websites, each web page must be optimized appropriately and ethically. Higher ranking web pages and total search engine optimization success is often accounted from unique web page title and web content

(e) You must also stuff your content with keywords, but do not overdo it. Overstuffing of keywords in your web page content is considered spamming. Both search engines and visitors hate it. This even would lead you to losing search engine ranking and visitors as well–not to mention the loss in sales.

…continue reading here: Another SEO Tips to Learn (Part 3)

Some of the SEO tips we have discussed from previous blog entries (Part 1 and Part 2) include (a) exchanging links with related websites, (b) writing informative content, (c) keyword researching, (d) writing unique web page title and content, and (e) employing keywords are not enough. There are more.

(f) You should use target market’s language in communication. Speaking in customer’s language is the best way of earning sales. You need to explain to them what products and services you offer and how these products can help them in their daily life. Using the language of your target market can bridge the regional differences between you and your client. Misunderstandings are avoided this way. Aside from that, you also help the search engines to understand your business, making your ranking better. This can be achieved by being specific in your choice of words. This is because search engines are robots; they cannot read between the lines.

In terms of what keywords to be used, it is also important to include area-specific ones. For instance, if you are offering computer rental services in Chicago, you may have “computer rental in Chicago.”

(g) Monitor your site statistics is an important task in search engine optimisation. Using tools to determine which keywords are leading more visitors to your website, which websites are delivering more traffic for your site, which web page is getting lower traffic and many other things are a great help. You may use SiteSuite or Google Analystics.

Read more: Learn More SEO Tips (Part 4)

While it is beneficial for you to have site statistics for your site, surveying is far more beneficial in terms of knowing how well you are as a web designer. With website statistics, you can have the knowledge to know which of your web pages are strong and which of them are weak–the ones that are generating too low number of web visitors or not getting any.

Aside from this, you can also determine the problem of your site. For instance, you have a subscription page with five steps that are also equated to five links/web pages. If your “first step” page is getting more website traffic but not on the second and the rest of the pages, this only means that your “first step” page is good and there are problems with the rest of the page. This is the time that you would know the problems of the site pages and work on them. There are also some cases in which first to fourth step pages are getting more web traffic and only getting bouncing traffic at the final purchase confirmation web page. Again, there must probably be something wrong with that. Perhaps, some of the links are broken or that it is not working effectively.

Another challenge that SEO professionals are facing is the fact that search engines updates or revise the search algorithm. What’s more challenging is that no one knows when search engines change search algorithm. As a result, some web pages that are optimized for particular keyword phrase would lose their ranking. There will be another headache for SEO experts; they have to study again what new optimizing strategies would be acceptable or what are the latest trends. The nature of search engines in which algorithm is changed any (unknown) time also defines SEO. SEO is a continuous process because the search engine algorithm is always changeable.

The changing of search algorithm is done to control SEO service provider companies. This is to avoid spammers dominate the search engine results page. Frequent updating of search engine algorithm would prevent spammers and will eventually have them totally eradicated. Just in time.

The effectiveness of a website greatly depends on the layout and design. A web design must include the following things to be considered on the process:

Text type
Text size
Font size
Font color
Navigation system
Color scheme

It would take a lot of time to load if your website is stuffed with many images such as photos, flash banners and other sorts of graphics. Things like these are annoying on the site; so, it would be better to minimize them and use them seldom as possible.

Professional web design company like WME always considers the basic principles of web designing. The company employs different methodologies of web designing and development that are proven effective. These include extreme programming, agile development, model view controller, and rational unified process to derive on conclusion in finalizing the look of your website to be put live on the internet.

Since web marketing business is growing unstoppably, search engine optimization and social media optimization also become a need aside from web designing. Web design and development and SEO (SMO) always come in partners; they are the two most important things to consider when venturing online marketing business.

Most of the people today are internet users and tend to shop for things they need online instead of going to department stores and malls. There are great benefits in putting up a website because you can save money. Unlike renting a building or establishment of any form, it really costs a lot without the assurance of generating sales with the limited audience, in which usually have no intentions of buying. With an internet marketing business website, you can actually target internet users who have the intentions to avail a product or service.

Here are top four reasons putting up a business website is a need.

(a) Your website serves as the virtual business establishment in which people can do shopping and eventually buy any of the products or services that you offer

(b) If the customer find something interesting and would like to buy, your website would act as your business card in which customers are given easy access to contact you. You can have them contact you via email, phone, mobile phone, or fax machine.

(c) Since your website is accessible 24/7, this adds more business potential to have more customers for increased sales. Your credibility as a business is also added.

(d) The website allows you as an online entrepreneur to have you and your web marketing business known in an image rich and descriptive way.

The future of SEO can be best predicted by studying on its changes over time. The future of SEO is all about change. The change may take place on search engines, search engine optimizers, and online marketing entrepreneurs.

When will the future be? Actually, start of the future greatly depends on when the Google will start to upgrade its search algorithm that will change everything, such as the trends of SEO.

Let me just provide you my speculations on the future of SEO.

(a) Google will still be leading the race of being the largest search engine in terms of the number of users and subscribers of its services particularly search engine marketing. The main reason for this is that Google is lucky enough to have such brilliant staff and team leaders who manage to update or enhance the capability of the search algorithm for the benefit of the searchers in giving them more accurate search results.

(b) Search engine spamming strategies will work no more. Because of the beneficial trend among search engines which is to give internet users the most relevant search results, spamming industry will die. I don’t think that the existing search engines will choose to be left behind by Google. Of course, they are always trying to beat Google by trying hard to update or revise their search engine algorithm.

Read more? Click More on the Future of SEO

Spiders and dogs may not be taxonomically related but they have one thing in common; they are voracious and like food all the time. Search engine spiders may be another thing because they are not animals; however, like dogs, they should be fed in order to have your wants done. Offer them food is the most important task. How is this done?

Your website can serves as enticement and at the same time, also a food for search engine spiders. Since search engine spiders crawl on websites linearly, what appears on top of your HTML document is what’s being read first. That is why putting the content that is of highest priority is important. So, putting your keyword rich content closer to the <body> tag would have your get indexed and rank in the search engine results page favorably.

Floating your web design layout is the easiest way of making your content to appear as first in your HTML document. Have your navigation column to be on the right or left by having the columns (navigation and content) float. Put the content in the first division of HTML and float it to the right, and have the navigation placed in the second division of the HTML and float to the left.

This web design technique is proven effective for being a top ranking site (for particular keyword phrases) in any search engine results pages of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The use of white color in web design is seen in several site forms like such as blogs, online portfolio, e-commerce and many more. White is also used in any web elements such as font color, link, images, background color and others.

What is visually appealing or nice to look at is a site that is simple, with enough white space or anything white on it.

Here are some tips when creating a simple but elegant site.

(a) For links, use light or bright colors
(b) Minimize the images; put more white space on the site
(c) Content should easily be located and followed
(d) Have minimal web ads or do not use at all if possible
(e) Avoid making your font smaller than what is comfortable to read by the eyes
(f) Finally, be creative.

Visit Web Marketing Experts (WME) for web design that maximise your online presence. With our SEO friendly website, not only will you have a clean, innovative look, your website will be highly positioned on major search engines, resulting in greater sales, leads & business exposure.

Communication is the most used process when operating a business. In fact, communication exists anywhere and anytime. It also exists in different forms, some may have the face to face conversation, others use phones (via calling or text messaging), and others use internet via instant messengers. Since technology evolves so fast, the mode of communication becomes even more enhanced and modernized. Phone call and text messaging can be done via internet, while internet emailing and instant messenger chatting can be done through cellular phones. In any way, communicating to keep your business running can be done in a variety of modes of communication. However, the success of communicating process does not reside merely on which medium it takes place; it is the language.

As a client, it should be your concern to require the web design company to use a language that you understand. Of course generally, English is used. Anywhere in the world, English is the major second language. In business, English should be used to avoid difficulty of communication. That is why, it is important to have a web design company that is fluent enough to talk about business.

(a) Text vs. Background

You should always consider the color contrast between the text and background. Dark colored text on black or any dark colored background and light colored text on white or any light colored background is bad. Having these lowers the percentage of readability and even the appeal to be read by internet users. To avoid eye-straining web design, always look at the color wheel and analyze the contrasting colors then select the desired color combination for your web design.

(b) Java objects as Decors

Some of the webmasters think that Java stuff such as Java clock is nice to be put on the website. Eye candies like this is not really palatable to the eyes; actually, they are irritating. Make your site simple and content rich. That’s what makes the site stand out. And Java objects are just a piece of disturbing objects that even make your ranking in the search results poorer.

(c) Popup Windows

Nothing is more annoying than popup windows. They do not actually add credibility for being clever in having this tool to make a web design that stands out. Seldom among the users really pay attention to popup windows; most of them are inexperienced occasional web surfers.

These mistakes can also affect your organic rankings for SEO as your exit rate are likely to be higher.

Spam mails are the common spamming output. It can be any type of junk mail or emails that you absolutely hate seeing in your inbox. They are like worms that crowd your inbox, making some important mails buried deep in your inbox. This creates hassles because there are some instances in which mass deleting them would also include deleting of valid emails or mails that you want to read.

Domain spam senders, I would say, are desperate internet marketers who are trying to win the competition in a nasty manner. And blocking them is a little bit hard if you have no idea and do not know how to spot them. Though the process of blocking them maybe hard, at least the mere fact that they can be blocked give some relief to serious and fair web marketing professionals who are doing their job ethically. The only thing you need to start blocking them is to have knowledge about them.

These domain spam senders send electronic mails that are sent to whoever is in their database through automatic mail sender software. The mails contain product commercials or ads from specific domain. So, people who venture on internet marketing should better be cautious about them.

Blogs benefits people in terms of information that are understandable by layman’s brain. Even if everything is presented technically, the way in which the concept is laid out would have people understand it. The reason is that the knowledge or insight is written conversationally, informally. Anyone likes reading a write up that is conversational than those ones that sound like a scientist or a lawyer.

Blogs became extremely popular because they have proven to be the most accessible and readily available through search engines as compared to articles that need one to have signed up in the site or have to pay to view the entire article.

Because of this privilege, blogs became the top choice of desperate internet marketers as spamming tool. What the spammers do is that they purchase a unique domain name from famous blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal. The blog is stuffed with blog posts that are actually empty of information but full of keywords and links. The worse case is that blogs often operate in a spammers’ favorite link structure–free for all. Since blog sites are reputable source of information, the links in spammers’ blogs are credited by search engines.

However, SEO company like Web Marketing Experts (WME) use blogs for ethical web online marketing venture. Try the company’s service and you will see for yourself how ethical and effective the website optimization and web design services it offers.

Both SEO companies and clients should be aware of spamming tactics to prevent ignorance. Ignorance is a crime and when you are hit by it, it is your own fault. Information is available anywhere in the internet and are ready at your disposal. They are just waiting to be read.

Here are the top 15 spamming tactics:

(a) JavaScript redirects
(b) Dynamic real-time page generation
(c) HTML invisible table cells
(d) DHTML laying and hidden text under layers
(e) Humongous machine-generated web sites
(f) Domain spam
(g) Duplicate domains
(h) Links inside No Script tags
(i) Publishing empires
(j) Wikis
(k) Networked blogs
(l) Forums
(m) Invisible text
(n) Link farms
(o) Link stuffing

The above enumeration is just some of still innumerable spamming tactics. Some are still unknown because only few internet marketing experts are studying more spamming tactics. Perhaps, there are spamming tactics that are in-discoverable because spammers are as witty as SEO professionals. I could say that they even know a lot more about anything in the internet than the ethical web marketing experts.

To this day, spam comments have evolved. If you are not meticulous enough in identifying them, you be victimized. Some of the spam comments this very time are hard to identify because they sound like genuine. Here are some determining factors to avoid these spam comments.

(a) They are short like: “I like this post” or “Nice article”
(b) The statement applies everywhere, to any topic such as: “This article is great. I learned a lot. Thanks for having your insights known to me. Hope you will post more informative articles like this”
(c) They are appreciative like the given previous example
(d) They sound spammy

The five factors above are spamming techniques that you should be aware of. They may not harm your entire online marketing venture. But in a way, they do harm it. Having more spam comments in your blog posts degrades the credibility of your site and there will only be SEO neophytes who will read your posts. You know what I mean.

Keywords are important in search engine ranking. They must be visible in the content throughout the web page. However, you should be careful of the keyword density. Keyword density is the frequency of repetition of your keywords in content. It can be derived by dividing the number of times the keyword is repeated over the number of words in your content. The ideal keyword density is 5% while some agrees that 7% or 9% is the standard. Once your keyword density exceeds from the limit by repeating your keywords unnecessarily, search engines would identify it as spam. Of course, you would likely get erased from their index or your site would be banned. This is the punishment that SEO professionals and other rest of internet marketing experts are avoiding. That is why, everyone is cautious on their strategies. Abiding the rules of search engines is the best way to get the desired results such as ranking higher in SERP of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

If a jungle explorer has a paper map with him to avoid getting lost while on the journey, site visitors deserves a sitemap. The sitemap serves as the guide for visitors of your site in order to navigate all the pages of your site smoothly. Sitemap is also a factor in having all your site pages getting indexed because it helps the search engines find all of your pages. If you want search engines to crawl deeper through your site, create a sitemap and that’s it.

Here are the 8 traffic-generating techniques:

1. Invest in PPC Advertising – Pay Per Click is the most effective way of generating traffic for your site. In order for your business to dominate the 3 major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN, you need to subscribe to their advertising programs. Subscribing to Google Adwords would have your site gain traffic for Google users, Yahoo! Search Marketing for Yahoo, and Microsoft Live Search Advertising for MSN.

2. Master keyword selection – Keywords are the ones that serve are the key to have your website visited. Choose the appropriate keywords for your internet marketing business to achieve the traffic you desire.

3. Create a capture page – Capture page is where the visitors provide their name, email address and other contact information. This comes in different terms such as opt-in page, squeeze page and others. This page encourages the visitors to provide their contact information which will be added to your auto-responder mailing list.

4. Write articles and press releases – With articles and press releases, you get long-term exposure for your site. Articles have resource box where you are going to put the information about your web marketing business, your contact information and links, too.

With vanity URL, your Facebook profile would look something like this: http://www.facebook.com/yourname. Myspace and Twitter already have offered this kind of URL; this is the advantage that these social media networking sites have over Facebook.

As of this time, the availability of vanity URL is not for all users yet. However, some businesses and celebrities are starting to get them now.

Vanity URLs allows the users to indicate their names or business names or entities in the URL syntax, instead of random numbers. This offers great opportunities on the part of web marketing professionals and SEO experts when it comes to popularizing your brand or achieving the success of your branding goals.

However, even without vanity URLs, Facebook is still the preferred social media sites for business strategies. Aside from its active millions of users that visit everyday, there are other ways to use it in online marketing business goals.

However, even if the internet marketers has successfully devalued the importance of page rank, still there are people who treats page rank like gold coins.

Why is that so? It is because there are still a lot of opportunities that page rank can give. With higher page rank, you gain more popularity compared to your competitors in your market niche. You are offered advertising of other online businesses related in your chosen field for a fee. Above all, you get more traffic because the higher the PR, the higher rate of credibility you gain.

Here the ways of improving your page rank.

1. Install more web pages for your site that are stuffed with quality content. Quality content means unique and informative write up that are, of course, related to your business. Arriving with a unique content is time-consuming but you get what you deserve in the end. Also, update your web content as often as possible so that visitors would trust your site of recent and useful information.

2. Build links for your website. Links do not only boost your ranking in the search engine results page because originally, it is the main factor in having your site PR increase. The more links, the more likely that your page rank would increase. However, always stick to the idea of quality link building. Do it ethically.

1. Quality Content – Everyone wants quality in everything, especially when it comes to web content. Internet users are meticulous these days; they tend to view only websites that posses quality content. So, in order to generate voluminous traffic for your site, putting useful information your web content is a great advantage. However, updating it with the recent information that really counts is even a greater advantage over your competitors.

2. Right and Appropriate Keywords – The most important part of SEO is to employ keywords within your web content. Keywords should be relevant to your website. You should think like a potential customers; think of word phrases that those potential customers would likely type in the search bar to get to your website.

3. Article Submission – Article directories are great source of quality inbound links. However, you must know how to judge a quality article submission sites. Submit your article to sites you think are credible enough. Article submission is one among the important tasks in search engine optimization. There are two great rewards that article submission can give to your website if you have written you article with enough quality; and those are web traffic and non-reciprocal links.

to be continued here: 7 Factors to Raise Your SERP Ranking (A Continuation)

(a) Blog posting develops relationship and community: Since blog write ups are written conversationally, there are no intimidation to occur on the part of the readers. Blogging is just a form of informal communication; it is like talking to your friends while in the living room. This way, you are providing a venue for your customers, even potential customers, to share their views and opinions in response to your blog topic via blog commenting.

(b) Blog posting influences the customers: Through blogging, the customer will be able to understand better what benefits they can get out of availing your product or service. Blogging has no limit when it comes to the number of words to be written or number of blog entries to be posted, thus, you have enough space for anything that you want to say about the benefits your product or service can offer.

(c)  Blogs are easily set-up and updated: Several blogging software or blogging platforms are taking the internet by storm. The cause of domination is that they are for free. Signing up an account is very easy.

From being an online journal, blogging became one among the effective web marketing strategies. Really, there are lots of unpredictable things that are going on in the internet because of its fast-paced nature.

Interactivity of a website is one among the factors for ideal web design. Website can be interactive with the help of applications such as AJAX, ASP>NET, C#, and JavaScript. However, JavaScript must be used minimally or you make your website unfriendly to search engines. JavaScript is unreadable in the eyes of search engine spiders, thus, discouraging them to crawl on the web page; so, just use it when necessary. The color selection is also an important factor for great web design; the background must be in high contrast with the text. And, choose colors that are not painful in the eyes.

Also, avoid making static web pages unless the content is attractive enough in terms of web design and most especially the content. Static web pages are really boring; your website visitors would see the same page over and over again every time they visit it.

If these tips be followed, I assure you that your internet marketing success can be achieved in the right time.

In order for the people to better understand the whole concept of Google 950 Penalty, let me present some points on how to get penalized with Google 950 if ever you are optimizing “seo services” as one of the keywords for your site.

(a) Put “SEO Services” on the title of your page.
(b) Put “SEO Services” as Header (H1) title for your content.
(c) Put “SEO Services” anywhere on the page.
(d) Put “SEO Services” as the Alt text for all any images on the web page.
(e) Put “SEO Services” as the starting label of your navigation links. So the navigation links would look like this: “”SEO Services Home,” “About SEO Services,” “My SEO Services,” “Contact SEO Services.”
(f)  Put “SEO Services” on the URL syntax of each web page. It would look like this: “www.yourdomain.com/about-seo-services.html.”

Looking at the enumerated points above, you would say that these are the right ways of sustaining the consistency and relevancy for your site. However, in the eyes of the Google search engine spider, this is unnatural and undoubtedly a spamming method in which the keyword “seo services” is stuffed anywhere.

Perform the mentioned ways of getting penalized with Google 950, and you will see how much truth this write up speaks.

Market Intelligence Gathering: Update yourself with the current trends in your chosen business field. Know also your competitors; study about their new services or products being launched. Gathering market intelligence is effectively done by joining to several but popular online forums that are related to your business.

Engaging Bloggers: Commenting on other people’s blog that are discussing about things related to your business is a way of engaging the bloggers. Blog commenting generates discussion between the blog poster and the readers. This opens a venue to help correct misinformation from either the blog poster of other blog commenter.

Blog Advertising: One of the benefit that blog can offer is free advertising. However, unlike banner ads, advertising in blogs is different. You don’t have to sound like a merchandiser who invites and convinces everyone to buy your product. You just have to sound informative. Write your blog post in such a way that you sound like an expert your field. Of course, if you are in a certain kind of business, it is expected that you are an expert of that field. Then, stuff your informative post with anchor text (the URL link must be leading to your business website). According to surveys, it is more convincing for internet readers to visit your site or purchase your product if you sound like an expert in the field but not necessarily boring than directly telling the readers to buy your product or service.

SEO efforts are done by a team because it would take a hundred years if you are optimizing a site alone within a very competitive sphere of web marketing, specifically SEO. Having other people to do SEO for you is quite risky especially if you have no idea about his strategies in optimizing. There are thousands, even millions of SEO outsourcing companies out there offering cheap and quality services that you can’t be sure of delivering favorable results.

That is why, it is important to be cautious and meticulous in terms of selecting SEO company in which you will be outsourcing other SEO tasks that you cannot manage to perform.

Some SEO experts who are claiming to be are fake and just exist with a purpose of earning few bucks online at the expense of others. They should be avoided because most of them do not know the ethical SEO strategies. Some of the SEO faux pas that they commit is optimizing your site with wrong keywords. They give impressive reports about top ranking keywords they have for you but these keywords are just generating traffic and not sales for your internet marketing business.

Since websites are, nowadays, great sources of information aside from books; it should be designed with the accordance to the two basic principles of making a website: visual appeal and functionality. By accomplishing the two principles in web design, you can be assured your web marketing success.

The most visited search engine, Google, is finicky when it comes to ranking web pages. This is because it aims to give what the internet users are looking for such as information and products or services. Otherwise, there would be no reasons for internet users to utilize search engines as tools for researching anymore. See what happened to Yahoo why it is overpowered by Google in terms of internet search race. The cause of that event is that Yahoo was not able to deliver much much relevant search results as with Google. Although, this fact is not always true this time. Yahoo is recently recuperating slowly to regain its fame as a reliable search engine. The reason why I am saying this is that website making through web design and development should be done according to what search engines want your website should be.

What search engines want your website should be is that it should carry and advocate the two principles of making a great website which I already mentioned earlier–the visual appeal and functionality. Search engines rank web pages that are rich in information. Meaning, you will be stuffing your website with useful and readable text in order to lead in search engine ranking.

Homepage: Since homepage is representative of what your website is all about, you have to clearly present your goals so that the visitors would know what to do. Top level navigation on the first page should be indicated as well as the logo. By telling the visitors what they can find in your website is the most important thing. Calling the visitors’ attention through information is the best way of making them stay aside from the visual appeal of the page. It is on the homepage that visitors would decide what to do such as clicking some links or leave it. If you want to put flash on your homepage, put “Skip Into” option and should be outside the flash. Or else, you are forcing the web visitors to wait until flash is loaded. This is a big turn off on the part of the internet users. Flash can be visually appealing depending on what it presents, but generally it is distracting.

Structure of Navigation: The navigation structure should be place on the specific area of the page where the internet users can easily find it. Navigational structure’s location on the page is standard and should be experimented just to give uniqueness on your website. Let your layout and design be responsible for the uniqueness of your site. So, it is better to keep your navigation system same on all pages to avoid confusion on the part of the web visitors. Just like what you do in writing, be consistent in all aspects such as in putting up your site navigation.

More principles of basic web designing is tackled here: “Web Designing Principles“

Web design, as web marketing experts say, affects the overall online experience of the website visitors. Each visitor is a potential client so making them pleased by drawing positive impression from them through your site poses for higher opportunities of sales. For instance, a website visitor is just doing an online shopping and no intention of buying anything, there will be chances that this website visitor will purchase any of your products or services if he or she is pleased enough of your site. Having your web design excellently made would convince even the ordinary internet searchers to purchase the product that you offer. Then, voila! Your sales are increasing more than what you’re expecting.

When web designing, you have to choose the colors for your web pages carefully. According to some expert web designers, the colors being used is the determining factor how your website comes across to your visitors. They say that dull colors would make your website plain and boring; the visitors have the impression that nothing is exciting about your website. On the other hand, extremely bright colors give a thought that you are unprofessional and that your business credibility is lost. Thus, you lose the chances of getting traffic and sales.

You should also avoid the event in which your web pages would load slowly. Slow loading of pages occurs when there are lots of graphics. Meaning, you have to minimize the use of these stuff; or else, your web marketing goals won’t be achieved.

The nature of the internet is in itself cannot be trusted. Anyone can be anyone he or she wants to be without worrying of getting caught. Online identity can be totally different of who a person is in reality. Well, virtual world allows anything that can’t be done in the real world. You can scold anyone, or throwing profane words to other internet users without being scared of getting sued. This is what World Wide Web is all about. It gives anyone a different freedom–a different freedom that is more than anything else. The freedom that I am talking here is the freedom to its extent, an infinite freedom. However, this total freedom is somehow restricted of some aspects.

And so, gaining someone’s trust is really a difficult process to do. Internet users are suspicious especially when talking about business. They make appear like a good person but at the back of your mind, there are inevitable anxieties of getting fooled or betrayed.

So, how can we gain online customer’s trust despite of this fact?

Gaining online customer’s trust starts with gaining your online image. You have to start establishing your credibility as a person, as a professional and as an owner of the business that you are campaigning online. The very first thing to do is to make a website that represents you and your business. Of course, you have to adhere to what excellent website is: it must have a great web design.

Great web design for products page must be prioritized. You have to use clear product photos so that customers can see what they are getting. Let the customers also be informed that when they purchase a product, the information you gave won’t be sold to others such as their email address or other forms of contact information.

More internet marketing effective advices and successful strategies can be learned from Web Marketing Experts. Hire a web marketing professional or SEO experts with us.

Web marketing is all about generating returns on investment. What’s the purpose of exerting efforts and spending money for your business of you are not getting any revenues? Of course, all businesses are all about money. The question is, how can you generate returns on investment effectively?

The answer lies not just in attracting internet users who can be your potential customers to visit your site. Making these internet users visit and stay longer on your site and click the rest of your website pages is the key. How can this be attained? This can happen if your site possesses the best web design. Excellent web design means that the site should be visually appealing, user and search engine-friendly.

Making the site attractive is achieved through excellent layouting. One of the tasks involved in layouting is the placement of images, JavaScript, and flash objects in the web page to make the site organized. Aside from organizing the objects of needed for the site, making the site search- Comes with web layouting is the arrangement of web menu and the functionality of the entire site. That is why web development is often interchanged with web design because they coexist. Some web designers are web developers themselves. They are in-charged of ensuring that all the links on the site pages are working as well as the programs in them (if in case the site is dynamic).

Do not settle for second-best. Hire web designers in Web Marketing Experts (WME) to make your internet marketing successful.

Online business or web marketing venture may sound complicated but it is not that difficult to understand and to do. One specific internet marketing venture that is fun to do is affiliate marketing. Starters are advised to do this. The first thing to do is to find an affiliate program that offers services or products that you find exciting. Of course, it is always a factor in business that the product or service you are promoting is the one that you really like. It is because you will find it rewarding and really fun when you love what you are doing.

With affiliate marketing, your expenses will only cover the registering for a domain name and paying for web hosting account. The rest of things to do are the promoting tasks. You have to let your website visible and let the people find your website in the search engine results page through SEO. You have to let the people get to your site. Other method that works is to have a mailing list of people who may be interested in the products or services you are promoting.

Other areas that are worth spending are logo design, web design and web promotion. But some of these are for free or do-it-yourself if you got the necessary skills.

The key towards successful web marketing, such as affiliate marketing is to spend money wisely in order to get hundred-folds of bucks you have spent for the business.

Web marketing such as SEO is all about playing games with search engines. Since blogs are search-engine friendly by nature, SEO experts integrated blogging or blog posting into one of the internet marketing strategies. By the way, what make blog posts search engine-friendly are the rich links and text plus the frequently updating web pages. Aside from that, blog pages use CSS instead of HTML because the latter is extraneous. Extraneous HTML codes would have the spider a little bit confused what the page is about because of those codes.

If optimizing a site is through internal and external links, optimizing a blog is just the same. However, frequently updating the blog with new contents is already enough to have it cached by search engines and eventually get ranked. Once you frequently update the blog, it is more likely to be crawled more often and your posts would get more visibility in search engines such as Google.

Since blog posts can be seen more often in search engines, there are great chances that the links that you create in the write ups would be clicked by internet users. You are not just generating links for your site with blogging, but you are also driving traffic.

If you are thinking of the most effective web marketing strategy, just blog.

Before the SEO should be started, you must first take a look at the code of your website if it makes your site search-engine friendly. Big SEO efforts can only be put to waste if your code is unreadable or simply unfriendly to spiders.

According to an internet marketing professional who is also expert in web coding, there are two search engine-friendly ways that can be used to format your web pages. These are HTML and CSS. More often, HTML is the one being used by most webmasters in putting up a website. However, HTML-only formatted web pages are limiting and would have your tasks heavier that it seems. For instance, you need to redesign your website. With HTML-only code, coding change will cover from page to page. If you got 500 plus web pages, you need to go through every page to modify each. That would be a considerably lots of work and time-consuming too.

It is recommended to have your site formatted using both HTML and CSS codes. CSS separates web content from web design. This means that the content consisting of the text, images, video and other related stuff would be in HTML code while the web template or design is in CSS code. Redesigning would be easier this way. Adjustments can easily be done because there is only one file to modify and will cover all the web pages. With HTML and CSS codes for your site, you can make your SEO ventures successful.

Google search engine is excellent in delivering relevant search results that makes the internet researching easy. Anything that you would like to search can be found by typing the right key phrases. However, the researching process is even made easier with Google Local. Google Local is a service from Google search engine that allow business searching easier. With the Google Maps, the location of the business is easily found. Google Local is like yellow pages that contain business information and addresses that are gone totally online.

The benefit that internet searchers can get is that through Google Local, the exact location is at your disposal, right before your very eyes. Just like how the Google Maps work, you have the option to view the location of the business establishment in traditional map form wherein you are given a 2D image of the streets and landmarks. You can also view the location in satellite image or terrain and zoom in the place for a clearer view of the place.

Thanks to Google that web marketing is being empowered and even made the process easier with Google Local service. Truly Google is the unbeatable search engine ever.

There are some instances that even if you are using some of the unethical SEO techniques, the site is not banned. However, you are buried in the search engine listing–deep enough in order not to be found by internet users. As a result, you don’t get any traffic much as any return on investment. Here are reasons why search engines blacklist your site.

Doorway Web Pages

A doorway page is often confused with landing page but the difference lies in the purpose and the content. Doorway pages are usually created for the purpose of driving traffic for the real site. They are usually containing keyword-rich contents that are nonsense. The content is purposely made for search engine spiders so that the real site can gain higher ranking organically. The content does not only contain text but also anchor text which links are leading the internet users to the main site. However, this spam technique is considered outdated because this is detectable by search engines already.

Mirror Websites

This technique is characterized by sites with the same content which URLs are different. Before, this is ideal for achieving higher ranking. But recently, search engines are getting smarter. This technique is considered cheating and so the site the uses this method would be blacklisted.

..Read more? Click “Other Reasons Your Site Gets Blacklisted“

Video marketing material really seems very easy to produce because we often think it is as simple as speaking in front of the camera. There are actually several things to consider before the event of speaking in front of the camera is done. The most crucial part is the making of the script. Every thing that must be spoken should be informational and all the details must be relevant to the purpose of the video. No single detail must be far-fetched or else, you get all your video marketing efforts doomed to failure. The script must be divided into short and concise paragraphs. These paragraphs, though short, should not compromise any detail that explicates what your business is all about.

You also have to consider the design of how your video must appear to the audience as well as the setting. It is recommended to have a simple but formal enough to contribute in the credibility of the speaker, which is you. You credibility will be added up through the way you’re being dressed and the way you speak to the audience. Confident speech is ideal but very achievable.

Of course, everything will be fine if you have outlined anything that is needed in making the promotional video. Aside from the video of “you” speaking in front of the camera, you also have to take note of other video shots or working shots that are relevant and important in making the promotional video “complete.”

The last task of creating a promotional video is the submission and distribution. There are already lots of sites that are dedicated in video sharing such as YouTube. No wonder that it is also hailed as one of the preferred sites for web marketing.

Though it is interesting to think that you can have as many customers as millions in number because there are already billions of people who are using the internet to shop for products or services, internet marketing is harder than it seems. Sufficient knowledge on the concept of web marketing and other sorts of online business strategies is needed in order to avoid the expected destiny that inexperienced web marketers would more likely to undergo; that is to fail.

Succeeding online will be attained even if you do not have that much experience in this particular online battlefield of entrepreneurs. How? Of course, a simple seeking of advice from web marketing experts is already a great help. It would be better if you got friend who is an internet marketing expert than hiring someone to teach you the necessary skills. If you don’t have any friend with these skills, your only choice is to hire a web marketing consultant.

Doing a research may help such as getting some tips and learning from informational resources such as books, manuals or e-books. However, most of the situation, these things do not help. Nothing so far beats the method of hands-on teaching for on-the-spot learning. Though learning web marketing all by yourself is achievable, only few succeed. Everyone needs a teacher for better learning.

(a) Alt Tags: There are some instances when an image does not show due to some reasons such as low bandwidth. Thus, Alt tags are also important because it serves as the name of the image if the web visitors cannot see the image. Alt tags or alternative tags are texts that serve as the image’s name. The Alt tags must bear the keyword and what the picture is all about. It is also crawled by search engines for relevancy aspects for image optimization. Creating excellent alt tags would boost your ranking in relevant keywords.

(b) Link Popularity: Nothing is considered to be the most important factor that would boost not only the page rank for your web page but also your search engine ranking but link popularity. Inbound links are the contributors of your site’s link popularity. They are also the ones that search engines would take as credits for the ranking of your site in the search engine results page. The more relevant those links are, and the more aged they are, the more that they get being flagged as quality link for your site. If you get quality inbound links, your site ranking for particular keywords you are optimizing would eventually gets to top.

(c) Rich Theme: The web pages of your entire site must be of one theme. Meaning, there should not be pages existing that are off-topic or not connected by theme with other web pages. Building content such as articles, FAQs, tips and others would help you boost your site’s potential. Your site’s web pages must content 200-500 textual content with keywords in them.

If the above things are achieved and properly done, you only need time for search engines to update and expect to be crawled and expect that more of your web pages will be indexed. Expect as well of getting ranked higher. The things pointed out here are merely ethical SEO. Only with ethical SEO that you can get long term higher search engine ranking.

Widgets can be placed anywhere in your computer such as desktops or in any mobile devices that offers features for widgets. They can also be placed in your website such as blogs, business website, or to any profiles of social networking sites you are subscribed to.

Users are enabled to access the information easily through widgets. Information about the latest news for both local and international, entertainment, weather and other field of interest can be made available with widgets. The demand to use widgets has increased. This makes them to be integrated as one of the methods in web marketing campaign.

With SEO – Widgets help a website to be proactive and drive more traffic while generating more inbound links for your site.

How do widgets work?

By placing widgets on your blog or site homepage, your internet marketing will be successful since you are allowing an easier access to your business website. People can download your widgets or add them to their own site. Another good thing about widgets is that they are viral. Users can share and download them from the sites of their friends.

One should comprehend how the quality search engine submission is done. It would somehow affect the success of your internet marketing ventures. There are lots of search engine submission services that offer and promises search engine listing, even higher ranking in the search engine results page. Though some of the sites offer genuine services by really submitting your site to several search engines, but the promises are just phony. No third party or anyone can manipulate the search engines but search engines themselves.

Recently, search engine submission is already a pass. There is no such thing as search engine submission that will guarantee higher ranking, traffic and sales. But there is search engine optimisation. Through ethical search engine optimisation process, you are already doing efforts to maximize the potential of your website. It is through this process that your web pages can be automatically indexed by the search engines. The process that is closely related to search engine submission these days is Sitemap submission. You are only submitting the sitemap to the search engines so that the spidering process will be done easily and efficiently.

To answer the question, search engine submission does not help; SEO and sitemap submission do.

All the SEO experts know is that Google updates more frequent than any other search engines. Almost every month, Google comes up with newly indexed web pages. The frequently updating of Google in its indexing and search engine ranking is also the reason why some of the page rank and even search engine ranking are diminishing quickly. Some sites that are ranking far from the top are ranking in the top 10 search results. Some sites that are ranking well goes down the web listing. There are many considerations and reasons why Google behaves this way.

The only resort to get desired results is to be patient with the continuous optimising processes such as link building and linking in and out through blog posting and commenting. Some SEO experts assume that Google takes out your top placement in the search engine ranking so that some of your web pages will be thoroughly crawled. After the crawling some of your web pages, your ranking is given back, not right away but in time that you can patiently wait.

Links are not all equal, and they can’t be. There are artificial and natural links. Artificial links are those that are made from link farms or free for all websites and links from irrelevant websites. Natural links are those that are created manually and from relevant websites. Relevance is determined by theme.

Of course, when we say quality links are those that are natural and created manually. One quality link is equivalent to thousands poor links. So, it is very impractical to settle for thousands of useless or poor links when you can achieve a quality link that can help on your site’s link popularity? By the way, link popularity is the determining factor in having your site ranked in major search engine search results page.

There are factors that would help you determine a quality link. These are content relevancy, anchor text, page rank, and no. of links on page. The website that you are linking to must be relevant to yours in terms of the whole site’s theme. The anchor text must also be related to your site in such a way that it represents your company and your products. The page rank of the site where you are linking from should be higher; ideally, the page rank must be 3/10. Lastly, the no. of links in a site should also be considered because it is the determining factor on how the page rank will be distributed. The value of page rank will be shared or disseminated among all the internal and external links of the site. In other words, it is better to link to a web page having PR 3 with 4 links on the page than to a web page having PR 4 but with 60 links.

When all these things are learned, as what SEO experts are always been saying–you are just one step towards successful web marketing.

SEO should be treated as something that is more than just an online business tactic; it is more than that. It is a mindset that we should develop. SEO skills are not innate like the skills of the writers. It can be learned easily if you dedicate more time learning about it. Several bits of information about it out there in the internet are free at your disposal. You only need a computer and an internet connection to learn it. There are even conferences or forums about it. However, since the SEO tasks are tediously repeated, many have opted to outsource SEO instead of having it done by the entrepreneurs themselves.

Comes with the growth of technology is the increasing number of SEO techniques and tools. But these tools are just add-up stuff to speed up the search engine optimisation process or to make it more efficient than the usual. The most important thing to consider when you are planning to venture on SEO is the basic skills. Here are the enumerated skills you need to learn.

*Ability to perform efficient research
*Copywriting skills
*HTML skills
*Web analytics
*Online public relation skills
*Keyword research and analysis
*Ability to use SEO tools/techniques
*Blogging as marketing strategy
*Ability to use social media tools

When the above skills are improved over time, then you’re on your way of becoming SEO professional.

Robots.txt is not a firewall or a password protection tool. It is a file that simply instructs search engine spiders. It is more of a note or sign for search engines that says: “Do not crawl here.”

It is important to know where the robots.txt file should be placed. According to some of the SEO experts, robots.txt file must be located in the main directory to enable search engine spiders or user-agent find it easily. If the robots.txt is not found in the main directory, the user-agent would assume that the entire site should be crawled and indexed.

People who venture on internet marketing must know that importance and use of robots.txt to their site. Aside from keeping web pages from being shown in search results, it also helps you save bandwidth by not including other files from indexing such as JavaScript, images and others.

Here is an excerpt from Google that are address for search engine optimizers about the concern on employing doorway pages:

“If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or ‘throwaway’ domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to ‘help’ you.”

According to Google that “it is even more illegal to employ doorway pages that are stuffed with keywords on the client’s site somewhere.” This practice does not contribute relevancy in relation to queries. The leading search engine says that “individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords.”

Doorway pages are easily identified. If a web page is not an integral part of the site’s web content, it is a doorway page. This happens when clicking a link–you are not directly led to the site that you want to visit. Instead, you are led to giant banners that are either flash or photos.

Like Google, SEO experts like Web Marketing Experts (WME) also denounce this kind of practice. WME employs only SEO methods that are in adherence to Google’s guidelines of optimizing a site.

Of course, the answer is yes. But Google’s spider is not fed with links alone. Since its algorithm is programmed in such a way that it biases towards informational resources, feeding or crawling on links, even with relevance, is not the only activity that Googlebot performs. The pioneers of SEO industry such as the so-called SEO Copywriters used to think that creating an article with an ample length of 200-300 words that are stuffed with links is already enough to get secured with your site ranking. This kind of thinking is already ancient when compared to how fast the world of internet marketing evolves.

SEO copywriters don’t exist anymore, only copywriters or web content writers. SEO copywriting is usually associated to a job in which a person has to write something out of keywords or write anything as long as the keywords are inserted without thinking of smooth flow of ideas, consistency and relevance of each view.

What we have now are web content writers or copywriters that are more responsible and concern of quality writing. Googlebot is a robot but given an attribute to sort out informational write ups only. Meaning, messy write ups even with links in them are put in trash.

Writing for Googlebot to maximize your web marketing potential, is like writing for people who think critically. In other words, writing for Googlebot is writing for the people. Just like what writers for literature do, any sort of writing to be posted in the web should be of quality. The keywords to be hyperlinked must flow naturally throughout the article.

Link baiting was redefined by Matt Cutts of Google. It should be an article (or blog entry) that presents interesting fact–a fact that arouses the readers to respond. Meaning, a “link bait” should be controversial if not funny or anger-provoking. When people talk about the article, there are chances that more of them will be linking to your article. This way, you are generating natural links. Link popularity can be easily achieved without much effort to exert.

A “link bait” is made by making a valuable resource such as lists, special reports, history of and many others. It should be newsworthy be the first to post about it in your niche. Disagreeing with an authority is one of the strategies in arriving at good link bait that works. Interesting pictures also work.

The only detrimental aspect of making “link bait” is that you cannot control the inbound links you get; you are getting irrelevant links too. Irrelevant links degrade the relevancy aspect of your site to a certain keywords. Link bait could somehow contribute small but almost insignificant problem to your internet marketing venture.

Keywords are the key to open a chest of treasure. Searching the right keywords for your business website is like finding small pieces of gold keys. Yes, keyword research is as difficult as that. Though there are online tools that help in letting you generate keywords for your site, deciding which of the keywords to be used is as hard as deciding what kind of business to put up.

Mining the right keywords can be done with the helpful tools such as WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the one I use often–Google Adword’s Keyword Tool and Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Google Adword Keyword Tool generates keyword suggestions that really sell while the Google Search-based Keyword Tool generates keywords that are user-generated. Searched-based keywords are the ones that are used usually when researching for information only and not buying. Meaning, they are keywords that generate traffic for the site only. Although, there are occasions that search-based keywords are used by the buying customers.

I personally use both Google Adword Keyword Tool and Google Search-based Keyword Tool because I find the task of mining keywords easier with them. I am certain that even other SEO experts also find it useful and and really make any keyword researching efficient. Other tools like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery are also effective depending on how you use the keyword suggestions they generate much as how I use Google’s.

As a writer for considerable years already, I would tend to ask myself before pressing the very first letter of my write up, “Will anyone read this?” This question is my guiding light to come up with a piece that (I humbly say) is worth-reading. The only technique to get the readers’ interest is to think like them. You have to write what the readers want to find out about your piece. The writing style is also important to have them kept reading till the very last of the word. Keeping the readers’ attention and have them convinced to read the entire article is never easy though. I suggest that it is far way better to sound like just having a conversation. An article that sounds pontifical or scientific is definitely boring. What entertains us are write ups that speak what’s in the mind of the writer. Meaning, a blog piece must be a materialization of the writer’s mind, an elaboration of what bothers them or what makes them happy, and so on. However, you should not forget to arrive with a short but concise article. Too long write up burdens the readers. As a result, they won’t read it.

Anyone likes controversies. How would you transform an ordinary write up into a controversial one? This is the difficult part. You need to have a creative mind to generate an eye-catching title and a mind-blowing content. Though the necessary skills are not available to all, they can be learned. The learning takes time; but it’s worth it.

If you are an online entrepreneur, you need to have excellent writers that are capable of catching the attention of the online readers and potential customers. This is one of the effective ways to have your business generate sales. Any kind of business needs writing; SEO or SEM needs copywriting. You need best writers like the ones in Web Marketing Experts (WME).

To be enlightened with this confusion, let give a short elaboration of what happened in the internet marketing realm, how SEM and SEO came and coined.

Search Engine Marketing is a general term for all kinds of web marketing ventures. Meaning, internet advertising, Pay Per Click, and web optimization efforts comprise the SEM. SEM is the umbrella of any business that resides or operates in the world wide web. Later in the mid 1990s, the demand for a business or even any website to be visible in the search engine results page increased. This was due to the realization that the more the website appears especially in the top ranking of website listing, the more chances of getting visitors. It was until Search Engine Optimisation was coined. It is defined as the process of optimizing a website in order for it to be visible in major search engines. When Google was established, Yahoo began falling. The reason why the internet users have chosen Google for any kind search is that it gives very refined and specific search results compared to Yahoo. Yahoo search engine by then was very prone to spamming. In Google, there’s no room for spammers when it started to operate. They get banned right away. Recently, Google dominates the market of online business ventures.

The main difference between SEM and SEO is determined according to their operation processes. SEM is an internet advertising that requires a pay and Pay Per Click is one. A business firm has to pay the search engine (which is the publisher of the ad) by click through. SEO, on the other hand, is totally free. A web marketer has to do on-page and off-page optimisation to make the website visible in any organic search.

Online directories are the online version of yellow pages, containing the website links and descriptions. They contain website listings that are categorized according to genre or field. Some are automated while others are human-edited.

It is recommended that when choosing an online directory where your website will be submitted, the page rank should not only be the basis. There are three other important considerations in deciding which online directories you should choose.

1. Choose online directories that are human-edited. The distinction between automated and human-edited online directories is determined after the process of submitting your site. When your site is automatically listed, that is automated. When your site is not automatically listed, and it takes 3 to 7 days to be approved in the listing, it is human-edited.

2. You have to check if the website listings are categorized by relevance. There are other sites that appear like online directories because there are categories in it. But checking randomly, some of the sites that are put under a specific category are not related to where they are placed. For instance, a website that sells fashionable apparels are listed under Search Engine Optimization category. Online directories with messy categorizing are not really directories; they are link farms. When your site is listed in link farms, your site will be banned by major search engines

3. Never attempt to submit your site to directories which link URLs have “no follow” tags. Your effort to submit in those sites would only be a waste. Though you are getting visibility (most of the time is not guaranteed), you are not getting any inbound link. Search engine spiders do not crawl on links with “no follow” tags in the URL.

Online directory submission is a must being one of the effective SEO campaign activities. It must not be taken for granted.

Unlike article and blog posting, a press release is a little bit difficult to create and be published. You have the limitation in word count and standard format to be followed when making one. The only frustrating part is when you submit your press release and none of the online press release publisher sites would like to publish it. Of course, online press publishers are not that mean to ignore your press release piece without having to read a few words. All of them, the true online press publishers (not link farm-related sites) have certain guidelines to follow when approving a submitted piece. There’s always a reason why some of press release articles are rejected by the publishers.

The common reason why a press release is rejected is the lack of news value. Having it written proficiently is not enough. There has to be a news value or something that would arouse reader’s interest. The content must be straightforward and hits the main point right away in the first paragraph. The inverted pyramid arrangement of information is necessary. The most interesting part is written in the first paragraph and boring details are written in the later part.

When writing a press release, you must not forget that you are not presenting a company here. You are presenting an interesting event, perhaps about or that relates to your business or company. Of course, don’t forget to indicate the complete address and contact information of your company at the bottom of the press release page.

Originally, social media tools are created for the purpose of enabling the people to communicate–eliminating distance, territorial boundaries, and even cultural differences across the world. Recently, a number of social media networking sites have evolved into being more interactive and fun in terms of services and features. Websites such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster and other related websites are now equipped with features more than what the social media networking sites should be. Aside from messaging features, the mentioned sites also allow their users to post lots and lots of photos and videos. These features are the main service of Flickr (or Photobucket) and Youtube respectively.

Even search engines adapt the features of social media tools. Google and Yahoo for instance, aside from offering emailing services, they also offer social media service features in the form of instant messaging or photo posting (i. e. Google’s Picasa Web Albums).

The primary reason why even sites such as search engines are adapting social media service is that social media tools are deemed to be the most effective way of online marketing strategy. It offers boundless opportunity such as unlimited audience for your business and great chances of selling more than what you are targeting.

Great web design is not just about the facade, the color, the 2D/3D images or flash. It is about both the look and the functionality. That is why most of the SEO consultants say that before optimizing a website, it is recommended to also avail the service of web design so that the optimization will work. Considering the looks of the website, there must be a high contrast on the background and the foreground. Images must not be overly done, much as the flash. Above all, the web menu and other functionality of the site must be user-friendly.