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.

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!

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!

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

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:

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.

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.

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…

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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’!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Web marketing is a procedure that can make a better change for your website. It is one way of getting visitors through natural search, getting relevant visits that will give an improved percentage of conversion.

Getting services from a marketing experts’ team can help your business implement a structure that will advertise it to the global community.  The marketing system that works well for any kind of business inside the Web is one that can certainly attract buyers for free. Search engines allow free use of their sites if a business wants to get listed in their results pages. A type of web marketing using search engines as an advertising tool carries with it huge potential for attracting users, and not only attract, but make them buy.

SEO is a potent system that can run your name in the search results pages. This provides online businesses to have a good introduction to users who invariably make their launch from the search engines. Search engines have created a grand influence in the lives of people. Picture the Web without search engines and there will be a lot of impossibilities that will arise. It would be hard to hunt for sites and businesses. There will be no more research and easy information. Therefore, the introduction of web marketing through optimizing website for search engines can help your site make money.

An increased page rank is what one needs in order to funnel users and make their visits. Anybody who is searching for information can easily click on a result that brings a link to you site. Hence, it is a very convenient form of advertising.

Once SEO has been set up, expect great results.  A site can rank in a short while after optimization. Moreover, the results can manifest themselves and stay there for quite sometime. Your name will then be seen as a top ranker 24 hours a day, accessed by people from all parts of the world. Your site can attract more links that are relevant using custom SEO done by a web marketing team. This is the current trend of things in Internet selling. There is no better way that has been discovered than natural search and so far, this is the best method that can be utilized because it provides results that last longer.

Start using SEO for your sites and see the difference. Submitting your sites for optimization can be the greatest action that you can do to help your business to thrive inside the Web.

Furthermore, there’s not one company online that does not like traffic. So, your website too, needs an increase when it comes to receiving web traffic. Marketing inside the Internet is easy if your website lands on the premium pages of Google, Yahoo or MSN. It is an admitted fact that the organic method of web marketing allows more users to get reached and this group has a higher percentage of actually buying.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is considered very reliable to target highly relevant traffic into a site. Other ways of attracting traffic can be expensive and does not also guarantee a high tendency to buy. SEO is effective and can make results very satisfactory. It is the only web marketing technique that can guarantee visible results. If results are a benchmark, then being seen in search results surely counts as a strong benchmark. The most sought-after visibility for your website can be realised by using web marketing methods like SEO.

Online promotion takes a bit of time to get valuable for search engines, though. However, the content of your site must be original so that search robots will value it. Originality is essential so that it can be crawled because a duplicated content from other sites can ban a website who is making an exact copy of articles.

Web marketing promotes the sites in a manner that the search engines can pick it up and rank it. Thus, marketing experts can help the website to get attention from search engine robots. In the same way the keyword analysis can make or break the performance of the optimisation process. So, it is important also to get a careful assessment of keywords that matter.

Get your site to come before the line. Get ahead of your competitors because there is no other way to do it but to be the leader. A rock bottom ranking cannot help in creating the sales you want. Hence, a good web marketing experts’ team can be the key to a successful online presence. Without that, your existence cannot be perceptible. In creating a web-based business, you have to be obvious in your intentions.

With web marketing,  you can get to the top, wave your winner flag and get hold of your customers!

In realistic terms, capturing customers has not been that easy. If you do capture some, there could be more that can be done if a web marketing technique is applied to it.

Improving online performance through web marketing will spell out the missing link that hinders your site to earn the potential it should be reaping now. Delay in application of these web marketing tactics would also mean more time to waste.

One thing that makes a mark in profit generation is applying search engine optimization (SEO). Methods such as publication of keyword-rich content, link building, directory submissions, social marketing and many others can be used on your website. No one will take trouble in voluntarily seeking for your site. You have to make your name known in a deliberate manner.

How? Web marketing experts can provide the boost for your site. Again, the content of your site must become a force to glue their eyes on it. If needing revision, marketing experts can also remake your content. Web marketing experts can do this bulk of work that can be tailored according to the specific needs of your site.

A web marketing team can do you advantage such as:

Do you want to be seen? In a simple illustration of what Web marketing is, it can be depicted as a wagon that carries your goods, including your name into the roads where people are plenty. Web marketing measures carry your brand, products and company into the minds of people who use the Internet. It is a web promotion system that uses many kinds of processes that are appropriate for each type of business.

Web marketing also allows businesses in the Web to concentrate their limited budget on cost-saving methods of promotion. As a result, these companies are seeing some competitive approaches to consider without paying a great sum for these services. For one, Web advertising methods can apply SEO to meet the challenges given by the crowding of businesses online. The Web has over 180,000,000 websites inside it. Thinking of this enormous population would make business lose courage. However, there are equal chances given to companies through web promotion. Some companies choose to outsource SEO, which is more a convenient kind of web advertising aside from being a cost-effective method. To them, hiring a webmaster would mean throwing more money for an advertising campaign in Web.

Obtaining a sustainable strategy is always tied to the purpose of increasing sales. Search engine optimisation offers an advantage for any business. Achieving online visibility through searches is the result of web advertising and promotion and without it, a business can hardly go far and survive the rivalry for online attention.

Are you still fraught with the intent of being
independent in financial matters? Almost everybody will agree on the importance
of using a good web marketing strategy to provide significant results. Trying
to make money online is not as easy as simply putting a website and just let it
lay there.

Even entrepreneurs who are into offline business know
that it is impossible to market the products without the proper strategy. It
would become like an impractical effort when trying to expect something when
nothing substantial is done.

If one wants vigorous selling activities to happen
it means one has to get all energies to get to work on a project. That
includes, web marketing strategies to be poured into an online project.

Basically, there are only two major things that
happen online, buying and selling. However, between these two are a myriad of
steps to take before it reaches to the other end, especially the selling part. In
addition, people cannot buy products which they do not see as available. It
means, some things are not being advertised to them. While many leave
everything to chance, there is no taking chances when it comes to online
selling. Stop taking chances, instead use web marketing into your online
business and see it grow in time.

This is the key that unlocks the potential of
realizing the sales targets of a company. Knowing who the customers are, would
greatly help in making out which direction to take. A business, either online
or land-based, must be specific on the people it wants to cater to. A deeper
understanding of the targets gives more feel for the customers because a seller
would know what pleases them. It is also important, not only to sell, but get
the satisfaction of these buyers. With that, repeat business will be certain to
flow and thus, provide continuity to the buying and selling process, aside from
establishing long-term relationships with customers.

A powerful presence is a great online advantage.

When referring to catching the bulk of attention for any online business, it is always straightly understood that effort and money must also go into it if the business is anticipated to lift into some higher level. In the same line, a business that is interested to create a powerful online presence must be ready for some sacrificial period. It is prudent to give some leeway until a favorable time comes when significant income is generated. However, the time and money spent doing online marketing processes is a worthy venture.

Actually, web marketing is not a quick fix, because it cannot produce results in an instant. An owner must know how to bide with time if a good and long-term result is expected. Web marketing methods are detailed and meticulous. It cannot make a giant stride in one setting because it is composed of little steps that lead to a larger goal. Its success depends on the rate of response of factors such as users and search engines, and sometimes, pay-off doesn’t come fast. On the other hand, hit and miss work do not merit the attention of users and search engines, hence the links and contents of websites must be carefully planned and published.

The website is a potent money-making medium and hence, getting the proper web marketing plan can propel the site into making powerful moves. Therefore, with the right web marketing mix, brought by a reliable web marketing firm, the online market can be dominated. Web marketing obviously, is the viable route to being successful in online business.

A web marketing team can ensure that the products and services become visible, as well as enable the whole business to perform well because running a business takes a lot of effort before it becomes successful. However, this team need not be actual employees in the office that work for you since there are a lot of online options that make this possible. Web marketing experts can be outsourced from an SEO company that offers web marketing services.

The Internet expands as more and more businesses want to share its online space. Actually there are already billions of businesses that compete online so this makes it more difficult to survive. Hence, it is a reasonable move for any business in the Internet to use Web marketing methods so make the business name and its product float in the vast sea of brands that are in the Web today. It is amazing that web marketing procedures can actually make you popular and be recognized. It is a keen way of advertising your name and products to the world.

Web marketing however, works more than to attract visitors. It also implements many tactics for brand recall so that people will become familiar with your products. Hiring people to do Web marketing work for your company is a better way to maintain the face of your business. Web marketing techniques also help keep web content fresh so that there would always be something interesting for readers to see and browse in your websites. In the online world, what people see is where they base their decisions. Therefore it is important to come up with an attractive “face” in the Web and also become full in substance.

Finally, when people realize how Web marketing can really help, it would become like a normal process that every owner will want to apply to their respective businesses. Web marketing can steer the company with skillful selling methods. In the end, it is not the web marketing team that greatly benefits but the business itself. Moreover, the cost of hiring a web marketing team will be already covered by the profits that an online company will acquire as a result of valuable effort by web marketing.

There is a lot of commotion in the online commercial world because each business wants to get its own portion of visitors and buyers. A lot of procedures have been tried but there is one that is always a hit in getting the popularity one business requires: web marketing tactics.

How does web marketing help find the people who are to become the potential buyers of a site? To note, web marketing has many procedures within itself that it can use on a site it is refurbishing. The target market is easy to reach, only with the proper arm to get them. In this instance, web marketing is the proper vehicle to use in seeking the crowd that most probably will get the products that are offered.

For example, a site that offers health and wellness services must get into that level of older Internet users. Moreover, the website that would advertise this kind of service should bear contents that would interest the group that it targets, one that would persuade them to buy. Web marketing starts from website development to optimizing the site to get into the pages of searches. That’s how lengthy the process is, and it is a continuing route to attain constant success.

Why so? Web marketing must not stop if a business wants to be effective the whole time it wants to exist within the Internet. The World Wide Web carries with it a very big potential of earnings. People can see the success made by online business that has applied web marketing tactics into their sites. That is why, web marketing applies varied approaches to each kind of business because each must be given its own dose of optimization.

Web marketing, thereby, is an exceptional method used in helping one’s business to reach the right market and making this target clients respond to the products that they see. By this, one’s online presence is enhanced and thus becomes a worthwhile trade that heaps cash.

Build a business that performs.

How does web marketing or SEO make a business to deliver profit? Businesses in the online world know that establishing a website isn’t enough. There has to be something to keep the ball rolling– vigorous sales activity. To achieve sales that make up to the mark, a process must go before it. One simple principle to note: there are no sales if there is no visibility. How can people buy a product or service if they do not know it is existent?

Visibility precedes sales and profit. People buy what they see. That’s how advertising plays its vital role in creating sales. Notice that in the online arena, web marketing and advertising also play the same role in stimulating customers to buy.

A well-designed website to launch a business is a good place to start. However, in the later part of its operation, owners would notice nil performance despite the good looks. This is the moment to plan to take further steps. By now, the business should have given ample revenue. Help must come. As far as sales are concerned, the virtual cash register is not creating a stir. In cases like this, a strategy must be implemented to revive the business. Get a good web marketing strategist to facilitate these plans of overhaul. Businesses reach their potential only when it is organized to a certain extent. Web marketing organizes the selling system of websites.

On the other hand, some tips to fire-off a business may help such as:

Offer free product trials. Take the best chance to let people experience your products for free. Once they like it, they’ll come for more and this time they are buying.

Lead site visitors into a subscription page than directly to a sales page. People get wary when sellers grab their neck the first instance they get introduced at a product. Most probably, they will get turned-off and have the impression that a site is desperate. Maintain a good image at all costs.

Get good content running in your site. The content of the site will basically catch the attention of readers. Words that are spelled incorrectly and bad sentence construction do not become attractive content. If the pages are interesting for them to read, they may be subtly persuaded to buy.

The payment mode must be very easy, including the product shipment.

Getting customers is a lot harder than maintaining them. Therefore, when these people are already buying, the next step to do is to keep them. It is important that these people are taken care of since businesses need to establish long term relationships in order to survive. Quality web marketing ensures that the system applied to each business will produce relevant results.

All in all, higher income can be realized only when the business can pick up on the pace of selling. Increase in sales is a gradual success, however, when the momentum has been started, there could be no limit to what a business can achieve.

Any business wanting to
create a better sales turnout from the Web usually focuses on the promotion of
its products. This is where web marketing solutions take part in helping to
create good revenue for any company. Consequently, it is always implied that a
business can thrive well, and continue its online existence only if high sales can
be produced.

A great number of web
marketing companies and web marketing consultants aggressively promote their
web marketing solutions for businesses, especially on the small ones. Due to
this, many small business owners are finding it quite hard to select from the
multitude of choices that are available.

First, business owners
must know that there is no web marketing solution that is ready-made and
applicable to all kinds of business needs. Each company must have a tailor-made
solution, each according to the requirements of the trade.

Looking into many web
marketing solutions, one can make a start by using search engine optimization for
a website. In addition, the website content needs to be developed according to
the keyword targets, which would facilitate the positioning of a site in search
engines. Positioning can also be helped, with the aid of the site’s optimized html
code. In cases of owning a business to business site, the pages in it must be
optimized for the precise keywords since it would help in making links later.

Other search engine
promotions that can also be suitable are identified as ad words placement, affiliate
marketing or many other. Plan together with the Web Marketing Experts team on
the methods that are suited for a certain budget your business can apportion.

Consider the advantages of
getting the service of a web marketing company to take care or promoting your
brand.

• Create a website that is search-engine
  friendly
• Establish awareness for your particular brand
  in the web
• Draw the right people to a website (those who
  really buy)
• Enable the owner to take care customers more
  effectively

It is a good idea to make
partners with a web marketing firm that has track record in its chosen trade,
one that can create custom strategies for a website so that the product/brand
can reach the actual market that it targets.

The virtual world is a jungle of all sorts. Thus, it is wise to bank on web marketing experts to do the tedious job in order to achieve visibility. A lot of business owners online have already realized how important it is to be ranked in search results from search engines. According to research, it is an estimated 33% of those who buy from online recommendations trust the results they get from search engines. What a discovery!

Web marketing experts work through many hours to get a business on top of the search engines. If one decides not to get their services and do it personally, a lot of effort is demanded for this purpose. Then, if one cannot follow through, especially in dedicating the said amount of time to maneuver the site’s position in searches, then sales and profit cannot be expected to multiply.

However, time is not just an element that one needs to input in getting a site to be visible. There are yet other secrets of the trade that web marketing experts have meticulously studied. Therefore, if one person knows just a handful of these, the truth is, it may not be enough. These web marketing experts are there for a reason. They want to burn the candles for business owners and they work hard to dispense the best possible results they can give for any online business they take on. In deciding who to get, remember, get a web marketing experts group that can be trusted, one who ranks top in its own category in search results.

Choose wisely.

Recognizing the importance of an effective web marketing plan will help you extend your range to a global perspective. You will have to sell to all corners of the world if you want to spread your extent. With this consideration, a web marketing tactic can take you to greater levels when your website goes “live” in the Internet. So, applying web marketing strategy means that you are aiming to:

Do you see it that way? The reality is, you cannot bank too much on this perspective. Chances are, your website is not seen by others, even if it’s there. The truth is, they do not know your website exists, or if some even do know of your presence, you are not able to catch the bulk you want to seize. Your website is not set to draw your prospects from every corner of the online world and still does not obtain the revenue you have hoped to gather. You need to drive your website to sell as it is purposed to. The secret is, create an online visibility through the help of web marketing. Let prospects see you, purposefully through web marketing.

With such stiff competition in the Web, one has to make an intelligent tactic to be able to rise above the bulk of those who also would like to cash in on their online presence, just like you.

When starting to plan of creating your online presence, there has to be a strategy for pushing your products in the World Wide Web, just like creating a strategy for offline selling. It is called Web Marketing. When a businessman realizes that the site is not getting the expected traffic, then it is right for an entrepreneur to consider applying web marketing methods. What about the lost time? It is lost but at least, though applying web marketing strategies late it is much better than never applying it at all. Web marketing works, and the results are direct.

Online success is not an overnight situation, there has to be some meticulous processes to observe before you can win. If you are not diligent enough to practice the strategies though you have learned yourself, your goals will take much time to be realized. If they do at all, then maybe only by sheer luck that your sales objectives are met. Take your presence to the next level by taking in an expert to do this job, web marketers who are adept at applying the best online strategies so that you can be seen, and be noticed for your good content and be patronized. Finally, when customers begin to be aware that you are a trustworthy supplier/provider, then you can say that you have earned their trust. That’s the finest thing you can get from your customers and by word of mouth or by online recommendations, you will be able to spread the good name that you seek to establish. Web marketing introduces you into a wider arena that is to become your prospects. Practice web marketing and lose no time, because time is precious in business.

Know the Basics

Web marketing is defined as a process of creating methods that would influence customers to buy certain products.

One advertising fundamental is for one to know why a business wants to advertise. It is important then to clearly define the points for engaging into online marketing and advertising. Determine whether it is for sales, visibility, or for generating traffic to your site.

The Advertising Message

In creating means to support web marketing campaigns, the ad message for a business should be delivered straight to the target audience. Emphasize on the product benefits when making the advertisement to give the readers a quick idea of what is being offered to them.

Decide whether you will be advertising for search engines, putting up advertisements in company home pages, or merely distributing your materials through emails. Make sure that you are going to place your advertisement where your target market would easily find them. Your target market must be the very first to know that you exist.

Determine the maximum mode of exposure that you can afford and use. There are a lot of online advertising formats available to deliver your message to your market. Among the best web marketing practice is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This process will allow your business to be included in top searches. That is better visibility option for you.

The premise is simple: You advertise because you want to be visible, distinguished, and notable. In advertising your products, you get to market your products. People see first, and they buy what is attractive to them. That is how web marketing works.

In applying web marketing and advertising, employ creativity that stands out. Use catchy headlines to grab attention. People do not have the luxury spending too much time paying attention to details so stimulate their interest through short yet powerful statements.

In Summary

All in all, your web marketing drives should produce the targeted results. Web marketing and advertising directly affects the reputation and revenue of your business venture. When skillfully maneuvered, web marketing campaigns can simply lead your company to explore new levels and can even aid you in climbing the ladder of business success.

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Strategy 1: Determine Why You Want to Build a Website

The first thing to do, before actually building the website you want, is to decide on your purpose for it. What is your goal? Once you have that objective clearly cut, then conceive a strategy on how to build it. This approach must be defined well so that your purpose will be accomplished. Success needs a lot of effort, so create a plan and provide tactical direction into your concept. Get any kind of help so that you can narrow down on a good process for strategy 1.

Converting your visitors into customers shouldn’t be left to chance. More over, focusing on the right features such as web design will also play an effective part in the overall impact of the site.

Strategy 2: Your Marketing Plan: Get Search Engines to Do It

The second strategy tells of the development of a marketing plan for your products. However, the most challenging part is where to begin the method. The most efficient way to make out an effective marketing strategy is to discover the market activity of your competitors. Get the trends in the market and statistics to guide you.

It is a fact that 90% of online users comprise the bulk of searches that are conducted on search engines. If you want visibility, then target your direction into the search engine ranks. Many websites are not found by search engines mainly because they are not registered. In the history of Internet marketing, search engines have become the primary tool to drive traffic into sites. Yet, only a few of those who build websites are sold out to this idea, discounting the great potential of search engines to make prospective clients visit their sites. For those who know the value of search engine marketing, this process is indispensable for them.

Strategy 3: Optimize Your Site

Site optimization brings with it the biggest potential to heap up sales and profit for any online business. It brings people to see your site and particularly, the real value that comes with the products you provide. Getting top rankings in searches are by far the most promising lead generating method identified. This is a complicated structure, however, but its rewards truly compensate in the long run. It is always an advantage to be seen in the search results pages of big players such as Yahoo, MSN and especially Google.

Online businesses need maintenance to ensure that web traffic to a specific site is active. Search Engine Optimization as a website promotion tactic is an ongoing process, so if correctly done, produces worthwhile rewards in terms of product sales and profit. Thus, engaging the services of a reliable SEO company can always provide the right optimization methods that one’s business requires.

Most of the businesses worldwide have seen the great potential of e-business venture, such as Sydney based Strata management company Strata Live. Instead of merely operating their businesses on the physical world, they have also established it in the infinite world of the Internet. Print media, radio, and television are already proven to be the effective channels for business advertising. However, these advertising channels reach limited audiences that are often times not potential customers. Media groups do not target specific audiences because its exposure is designed to be for everyone. Aside from being an expensive strategy, you are not assured of drawing customers right away. The internet has paved the way for solutions to problems like these. Through Online Advertising, business visibility becomes attainable at cheaper prices for maximum exposure.

Maximum exposure means having your business advertised anywhere in the world without worrying of paying the ‘per minute’ exposure. Nothing beats the practicality that online advertising benefits can offer to any kind of businesses.

The only problem that you would encounter is the selection among the innumerable online advertising firms you should choose for your business. Well, this might be quite difficult. Your wide of selection can be narrowed down by taking into consideration the things like: what kind of business you have, and how would you prefer to have it presented in the internet. Research will help a lot. Give enough effort to get great results at hand, every time.

How search engines work may
seem an ambiguous matter for most people but before delving into how this
method works, you might want to know if you really need the power of search
engines, foremost, in your online business.

Do you really need to be
recognized by search engines? In this new era of doing business and carrying
out various transactions, the answer is a definite “yes”. Search engines
simplify the work of a person wanting to find particular subjects or products
from over a billion web pages in the Internet, which is considered a vast
library of information and a source of endless opportunities. If you are
looking for specific information, then the only thing to get reliable help from
is by the search engines. You need a search engine when you are clueless about
something and the most relevant thing to do is let the search engine find
anything about a certain topic for you.

A search engine refers to an
automated program, called crawlers, spiders or bots, allowed to run free in the
Web. These “bots” are unleashed so that they can perform meticulous surveys on
every webpage they come across, and archive these sites into their databases.
Upon collection, the information given in each website is analyzed and indexed
so that whenever someone types in a word or phrases into the search engines,
all information is scanned from the database and results are given in an
instant. The search engine results page
(SERP) will start with the best site and from there the ranking is determined.

A website that contains
original contents will be given a higher rank in the search results. The bots can
blacklist your site and get penalized if they are copied from other sites.
Search engine rankings provide websites the visibility they need. Furthermore,
it will be easier for readers to remember your web product which gives the
possibility for you to heap sales and get a quick return of investment.

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]]> http://www.webmarketingexperts.com.au/blog/2008/11/the-way-search-engines-work/feed/ 0 http://www.webmarketingexperts.com.au/blog/2008/11/increase-your-sales-through-online-marketing/ http://www.webmarketingexperts.com.au/blog/2008/11/increase-your-sales-through-online-marketing/#comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:41:02 +0000 tara http://www.webmarketingexperts.com.au/blog/?p=5 Websites carry with them the huge potential to raise market activity. However, some companies put up their websites only to ease correspondence with their customers. It is a more sensible objective that a company should use their online presence to boost their sales activity. In some situations, this rarely exists. Hence, consulting online advertising experts can help not only modifying the approaches to draw customers to the site but also to get these customers to buy the products.

How do you increase online sales? The reasons below are seen to be effectual tools that can be applied by any business unit if that goal must be realized.

Advertising Campaigns

One powerful mechanism that can be used is online advertising campaigns. With online advertising, a global scope is reached and your site can be seen anywhere by those who are interested in your products. This is a direct method of reaching your target markets since online ads are specifically sent to draw the eyes of its targets.

Keywords that Hit Home

You should know how to choose words. Better, let an advertising expert do this task for you. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a tricky endeavor since there are word placements that can have an edge over other advertisement of the same products. The competition is global, so you must place keywords intelligently, especially if you attempt to rise above your niche in the competition. Companies that provide online solutions can be best employed to handle concerns like this.

Ranking in Searches

SEO is a good way to obtain online presence. It provides a natural linking among websites through the search results. In order to determine if you are among the top ranks, simply search for appropriate words and see the results page. This will tell you if you are able to reach your market, since being found in the first two pages of these results means that you have a good ranking. If not, then your site stands a good chance of being left out.

Give your business the leverage using online advertisement and increase your returns.

1. Products that help your customers earn money or save money. Admit it, people are
   always looking for ways to make money. Thus, if what you offer will allow them to avoid spending much, then it is a good product.

1. Products that are educational like e-books and how-to’s are selling like hotcakes. People want fresh ideas so a competitive product introduces new technology and techniques to the reader-consumer.

1. Products that promote health and comfortable living are in demand. However, this is one of the most abused areas in online products, since some false claims on herbs and supplements that produce magical results often lead people to feeling suspicious. All the same, many people are conscious of health and the fight against aging. Hence, this kind of product catches many buyers.

1. Products that promote entertainment like video games, TV shows, sports and many others. There is big money in the entertainment industry. Money flows rapidly in this trade. The best thing that one needs to have in order to offer entertainment products, is talent and expertise.

1. Products that spell convenience for users. Whoever doesn’t want to make life easier? Gadgets, appliances and software come into this category. Things are done instantly using products that help in day-to-day routine, whether in business or at home.

1. Products that have lasting value. The promise of helping customers gain more value for a product will make them buy big and buy fast. In giving them that guarantee, make sure that the promise is delivered and they receive these positives as it was actually presented to them.

1. Products that have a universal demand. These are identified as Web hosting services, online marketing and advertising, IT solutions and more. These products can be pushed to a wide scope and it reaches a global audience.

1. Products that generate a repeat business. Right, this kind is one of the most sustainable sales and profit generator among all products. People come back to purchase these products repeatedly such as food, vitamins, telecommunications service, memberships and more.

In selling products, especially in online marketing, promote one that you can certainly believe in. The seller must be able to tell of the benefits of the product first because it is the direct way to convince the customers to buy. Thus, sell only what can be useful, primarily to you as the seller so that you will know if you are really bringing true value for your customer’s money. If you achieve these effects then you can put up a business that can be sustainable and leads to more profit potential.

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Can you really get your site visible in search engines? Most have the false impression that their Web sites would mechanically rank up in the search engines. This may be possible, but less likely. Creating a website alone is not a guarantee of being indexed. Important sites include yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, MSN, and of course, Google. The rest will follow once your Web site is identified by these sites.

Primarily, search engines crawl on various sites regularly, using spiders that inspect page after page and site after site via the hyperlinks. Hence, if your site is linked to other sites that gets crawled often and is higher in page rank than you, then consequently, search engines will consider your site to be of value also.

Accordingly, search engines asses the Web site value on links by considering what sites are linked to them and what links come from the site. Therefore, the more links you have, especially as the Website is launched, the higher the probability of being marked by search engines. It is also called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a very competitive method since it gives intense focus on algorithms. SEO understands the way search robots work and calculates efficiency rate of sites.

80% of those that visit web sites have come via the search engines. SEO allows the increase of site visitors when a single site ranks good in search engines. This increases the probability for more visitors. The very first to appear in any search results will get the bigger chance of being clicked. To achieve this, a site must have a good ranking in the search engines so that more traffic will be driven to the site.

Most importantly, search engine specialists are there to ensure that the site is accessible by search engines. Never underrate what SEO can do. It is a very useful tool to get ahead in search engine results. You too, can get ahead and win the tough competition in online business.