Search engine optimization - SEO, website traffic

Worldwide web is place where every body feels like “Oh, It’s easy, I can do it. I can create a website.”.

 Yes you can create a website, but is that all you need.

There is over a billion website and number is as huge as population of the world today.

Any body who wants to establish here, like any other field, needs to workout his goals like :

• What kind of website do you want to create?
• Who you think will like your work?
• Is there space for one more website?
• How will you market?
• How many visitors you need to break even?
• and most important! what is the moto of your website?

Only after you get answers to these question, you should move forward towards development and marketing of website.

I was cruising around today looking for ways to help you and me get more traffic to our blogs. I ran across Seth Godin’s blog. He has posted 54 ways to get traffic to your blog. Seth Godin is a master, I know, but it seems his list contradicts itself every other number. For example he says don’t blog about your kids, then a couple items down the list he says blog about your kid.

Makes me wonder, again, if it really comes down to just blogging about whatever makes you feel good. I think there is a huge amount of Law of Attraction in blogging. The other day I posted about Weaning a high needs toddler, it’s something I’m currently dealing with, and didn’t know where I should even begin. Later that very same day I searched over at mothering.com and instead of searching that site it searched google. There was my post, #2. I didn’t look for good keywords, or do any of the other technical stuff I usually do, and there it was within a couple hours, top of Google.

I’m not saying not to do all the keyword searching, and making sure you are relevant, but what Seth’s post told me, is it’s kind of a crap shoot. Do this, don’t do this, it all works if you work it.

I don’t know if that’s right, but it’s what it said to me. What do you think? I’d love to hear what you think of Seth Godin’s list of how to get more traffic.

This post is taken from blog by jackie lee

Apart from the basic things needed on blogging mentioned in my previous post on online marketing, you need to have knowledge on following things as well to set you apart from other bloggers.

1. Knowledge of HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Mark up Language. This is very basic language that defines the web page. All browsers understand this language and define formatting of text, image, alignment, font type, image placement, image URL and many more. There is lot more what browser does but widely used HTML tags will help you place your custom images, basic alignment and formatting of text.

2. Image editing

Blog post with Images makes a lot of difference. A picture is worth thousand words, which not only describe lot more and better then a paragraph. Little knowledge on photo editing gives you an extra edge, as on number of occasions you just might want to lower the size of image or crop, resize, edit color, resolution or make your own out of it. There are many image editing software for novice users to professionals like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Image Ready.

3. Search engine and SEO

Search engine is utmost important and primary source for directing readers to your blog. Your blog should be user friendly for major search engines to analyze and sort your post contents. Your blog should be optimized for search engine.

Search Engine Optimization is a big jargon and in-depth subject. There are tons of Search Engine optimization techniques to learn and implement. Often search engine algorithms get changed and reflect in different Page Rank of websites and blogs.

To begin with make your self clear about categories and tags you can insert with your blog posts. Tags are major keywords which describes your blog post is all about. In later stage I will describe each technique in detail to help you take your blog to higher page view level.

4. Online Marketing methods

There are number of ways you can market your blog depending on type, stage and size of your blog. I have listed some of widely used methods to jump start page hits.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Associated Marketing

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Affiliate Marketing

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Social Marketing

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Viral Marketing

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Press release programs

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Using blog directories

<!–[if !supportLists]–>- <!–[endif]–>Using Google tools

There are many more and lot of innovative methods come up all the time to promote your blog. Later I will explain each marketing methods in-depth with examples. Keep reading this blog.

There are ways you can monetize your blog with these online marketing methods and there are good sites who offer handsome money depending on your blog status and performance data.

5. Your blog platform

If you are planning for blogging seriously and ready to spend little money better have your own domain and web-space. This will give you your own authority and less dependability on other free blog platform providers like Blogger or Wordpress.com

Or you may start with these free platform providers initially and sooner move to your own domain. There are losses associated with this movement but you are not spending anything initially.

6. Your blog content

The single most important factor which differentiates blogs is its original content. Its contents, contents and contents which will create your loyal reader base and will set you apart from your competition.

It is a mildly risky but potentially brilliant counterstrike against Facebook’s rising popularity.  Myspace will announce shortly that they are joining the Open Social movement spearheaded by Google and which is now officially a social juggernaut of global proportions.    TechCrunch seems to have the latest on this breaking story.

If Facebook was worth 15 billion yesterday I’d suggest it just dropped by more than 50% in value.   Why?   Without Myspace’s hundreds of millions of users Open Social looked like it would be a third player in the field, struggling to catch up with the user bases of Myspace and Facebook and keep up with Facebook development.   But  not any more.  With Myspace, Open Social instantly becomes the key social network, dwarfing Facebook by any reasonable measure of prominence.   Can new Facebook partner Microsoft help sway onliners and developers to stick with Facebook’s “partly open” architecture instead of defecting to what appears to be a very open Google architecture?   No way.

After a long period, its working again. Yes! that’s Live(MSN) Search back link command. You can now check your website’s backlinks from Live Search. Its after a submission link correction in November, 2007, its BackLink command which has been fixed up by Live Search with some new commands.

You can use the following commands to check your website backlinks in Live Search -

1. +linkdomain:www.domainname.com - to check the backlinks for a particular domain (website)
2. +link:www.domainename.com/filename - to check backlinks for a particular file or a web page from a domain (website).

You can visit Advanced live search by clicking here - Live Search

The conventional wisdom is that you should rehearse, rehearse and rehearse your presentation. I say: Not so fast! Be very careful that you do not over rehearse your presentation. Remember that your presentation is a conversation with your audience. If you come across as someone who is reciting a speech from memory, you lose that spontaneity and connection with your audience. Smooth is good. Too smooth is not so good. And slick is bad. It is not what you say; it is what your audience hears.

It goes without saying that you should know the topic of your presentation to the point where you do not need to refer to notes to speak. Once you master that, your “conversation” with your audience will be natural and spontaneous and your audience will sense it and accept you right away. It will connect with you. Allow me to make a point: Let’s say someone gives you a set of PowerPoint slides with detail notes on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. You rehearse it twenty times and now you can recite every word from the notes. Will you be comfortable to go out and present it to a group of theoretical physicists? I hope not.  Use a proper search engine marketing strategy and you will be on your way to success.

The Amazon Kindle has received a lot of publicity since its release but a few days ago. This e-reader most certainly is the best we have seen thus far, however, it is nowhere near what I would like to see. I don’t want to go into too much detail as this item has been covered by a number of articles and blogs: 

http://www.amazon.com/, 

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/ 

http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2007/11/kindle-first-im.html

And many others. Anyway, a few things I have noticed that I don’t like are that i have to pay for blogs! (unless i just surf to them using Kindle’s online functionality).

I also don’t like having to pay 10c to have information sent from my computer, converted to Amazon’s proprietary file type, and emailed to my Kindle, all of which is a pain in the ass itself. I also cannot transfer file from the Kindle to my computer. according to Amazon’s website, the 10c fee is only for sending emails from your personal computer to your Kindle, but not for converting files to work on the kindle.

By this understanding, I can have Amazon convert my files to “Kindle” and emailed back to my computer at no charge, and then i can hardwire transfer the file to my kindle using USB. to continue this train of thought, i would technically be able to get digital text files from wherever (lets use Google digital scans of entire Libraries) send them to Amazon to be converted and emailed back to my computer, then hardwired to my Kindle….all at no charge!It may be badly worded on the Amazon website, in which case my theory will be worth nothing, but in the profound confidence I have in my understanding of the english language, the above would be true.

Not a bad way to go if you want loads of free reading material in a 10 oz Package, as ugly a package as it might be.A quick corollary, for the next revision of Amazon’s Kindle, i think they should work with Apple’s design department, at least make this machine look decent!That’s it, I’m done! 

The demand for SEO companies is increasing. Almost every website requires the help of one and because of this there has been an emergence of SEO companies. Site owners are now trying to find the best SEO Company that they could deal with. Since they are still new into the field, not all of them know how to choose the best possible SEO Company. Some are too overwhelmed that they just grab the first one that offers them services.

To start with, if you are looking for a SEO company, do not be overwhelmed by the things that they offer. You must consider that there are several characteristics or requirements that you should look for in your providing firm. These requirements will not only help you in choosing the search engine optimization services company but you will also be happier with the output that they will provide you.

The first thing to consider is the approach of the SEO Company. There are several approaches that SEO companies use in order to achieve the traffic that they require for a site. One of which is ‘doorway’ or ‘bridge’ approach wherein they use keywords that are not found in the site. This approach makes you gain rankings for a short period of time but it is also not accepted in major search engines. Another approach is ‘cloaking’ wherein the server provides unique contents when it perceives a search engine visiting the site. It shows contents with the keywords that are high in rank. Once Google finds this out, it automatically remove the website from their list. SEO Company that use these techniques are engaging in Black Hat SEO and you must avoid them like the plague as they will get your site banned.

Another requirement to consider is the results that it can give you. This will have to deal with the search engines that the SEO Company had created popular searches with. Major search engines are better than smaller ones. You should also consider the key phrases that the SEO companies use in your website. There are sites as well as programs in the Internet where you can check if the keywords being used have high search volume. The higher search volume means that it has greater potential to bring your site a lot of traffic once higher rankings are achieved. Aside from these, the output for the whole site and the rank that it maintained should be taken into consideration. Check the output made by the SEO Company on previous projects. The website as a whole should be attractive for the possible audience. It should also maintain ranking for sometime. Lastly, make sure that the site that the Search Engine Optimization Company is showing you is really their work. Look for their logo to confirm their work on it. Do not be fooled because other SEO companies claim higher rank websites to be their own when in fact they haven’t worked with it yet.

The third requirement that you should consider is the support and the reports that the SEO Company gives to their client. Look for a SEO Company that is able to show reports on the ranks from the major search engines. You should be given detailed individual and overall report as well as the overview of the previous and present outputs. Aside from these, the SEO company should also be responsible in giving you recommendations on the steps that they need to do in order to maintain or further improve the ranking of the website. The work of the SEO company does not end, instead they continually provide help and monitoring on your website to be able to produce the traffic that you aim.

Aside from these, you should also consider the price that you will pay for the services of the SEO Company. If you prefer to go with known and reliable SEO Company, be prepared to pay for higher fees. You can also find a new incoming SEO Company that promises to provide the same output. In cases like this, you should consider that there is a risk that you should take.
Lastly, consider the references that the SEO Company worked with. They should be able to give you a list of their past clients who were satisfied with their services.

As a whole, in order to find the SEO Company for your site, you must be satisfied with the results that they made for their other clients. They must communicate with you well and will work on your request. There must be a good communication between the two of you. SEO companies are almost everywhere, choose wisely and choose well.

SEO Template

Domain Name

Your domain name should be about your product, not about you. It should say “www.widgets.whatever”, not “www.the-great-us.whatever”.
Where you make blue widgets and your keyword research has established that people are indeed searching in quantity for the term blue widgets, then your domain name should be “www.blue-widgets.whatever”. Use of the hyphen is deliberate. Engines see hyphens as a separator between words. Don’t forget, the human eye can seewordsjoineduptogether as being words joined up together. An engine can’t do that. We can’t have spaces in domain names though (a technical thing) so the obvious compromise is to separate the words in the domain name by a hyphen. Not by a dot (.) or by an underscore (_), but by a hyphen (-).

File Name

Again, blue-widgets.htm or .html, .php or .asp, (or whatever according to format) for preference.

Title Tag

Your subject or service should be first, your company name second, if at all. Remember, if you’re Joe Blow and you make widgets, the public will be searching for widgets, not Joe Blow. They never heard of you to look for you, right? So the layout is as follows; “Blue Widgets from Joe Blow Services, the Best of the Blue Widget Makers.”

Description Meta Tag

Same rules; product first, your name second. So it’s “Blue Widgets Customised to Your Specification, from Joe Blow, Home of the Quality Widget. Also, it needs to be long enough for Google to be able to fashion a decent-sized snippet from it. If it’s too short, only a few words long, Google will look elsewhere on the page to source its snippet. This means you relinquish some control over what appears there.

Keywords Meta Tag

Blue,Widgets,Quality,Specifications” etc. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to shovel in every possible related word you can think of, I’ve seen sites that have lines and lines of these, the same ones on every page. A few pertinent ones on every page please, with variations according to the content of the specific page. Separate them either by commas or by spaces, not by both. It used to be said that you only need to include any one keyword once as the engines would parse them into any possible phrases. Lately there are suggestions that Yahoo wants to see comma-separated phrases. perhaps it would be as well to include just that.

Head

Javascripts and CSS styles usually go in here. They need to be externalised into an external file and referenced accordingly. I used not to bother with either a doc type or a charset but I include both religiously now as validation lately receives wider acceptance as important.

Header Tag

There’s several Header Tags, varying from Most Important (H1) to Least Important (H6). Your keyword or key phrase need to be the first words in the first Header Tag, which should be an H1 tag. The tags should be used in order of descending importance, i.e., your first tag should be the H1 tag and each following tag should be in series, use next a single H2 tag or a series of H2 tags. Don’t start with an H3 tag, then use an H1 tag etc. This will just confuse the engines about the relative importance of your site’s content.

First Paragraph

First words in the first paragraph are your key phrase.

Bold

They’re in “bold”. Or “strong”.

Text Content

Sprinkled liberally throughout your page is your key phrase. If it feels right, then it is. If it feels right and it’s only mentioned twice in a 10,000 word document, and it feels right, then it is right. It’s the document that’s wrong. You’ve written a document that, let’s face it, can’t include your key phrase to any great extent because your document isn’t actually about the subject, is it? You may have started out with the right intentions, but you seem to have got lost along the way. I’ve done it - no reason why you shouldn’t either. Perhaps you can take this page, run a keyword analyser over it and find out what it’s actually about then you can use it as a related page in your site. Remember, you’ll always need more content. Home, asleep in bed, you’ll always need more content.
To sum up, if it’s mentioned ten times in a document that’s one thousand words long, and it feels right, then it is.

Graphic Content

Keep your graphic file names brief and inclusive of a keyword. Alt tags for ordinary graphics are lately being considered relevant again for seo purposes so it’s best to include a keyword.

Internal Graphic Links

Remember that in a graphic used as a link the alt text counts for seo purposes just as normal anchor text does in a text link. Alt=”widget site - large blue widget” would be preferable to alt=”here is a picture of me and Sharon at the beach on holiday in Blackpool last year and if you look closely, you can see I’m holding a widget”.

Internal Text Links

Use keywords in the anchor text throughout. Don’t link to “home” link to “blue widgets home”. Who searches for “home”?
Don’t link to “seminars”, link to “blue widget seminars”. Who searches for “seminars”? Include your keywords in your links. Take this important opportunity to remind the engines what your site is about.

Headers/Footers

Notice the layout of the pages here? I use the same sets of links in the header and the footer. This gets them all in twice (at time of writing - the site expands almost daily so I’ll have to re-think soon) and it’s perfectly legitimate.

Tables

If you’re going to use the traditional table layout, remember to build your table so that the actual main content appears to the engines before the list of links to the left does. Search Engines will expect important information to appear first. This won’t be so important if all your links include related keywords as I advise above, but it’s still worth bearing in mind.

Deciding a correct, proper and related keyword for your web site is key and most important as far as SEO (search engine optimization) is concerned. Selecting proper keywords is the base of the search engine optimization campaign. In other words it is the foundation of the search engine optimization campaign. At this stage, think many times and look around in the top search engines and/or use keyword selection tools to create a list of related keywords not only for your home page but every single page of your website.

During Selection of Keywords, make sure of following considerations:

First of all, select domain name which reflects the theme of your web site (if it is possible), however, if it is not applicable to get the related domain name then consider another, because it is not very important because most of search engines don’t give weight to the URLs.

Select keyword which are specifically related to your product or services you are going to offer. If you are using keywords in phrases then these must be meaningful short sentences, otherwise, yes your site will appear in top positions but there will be no use if no one is using that unnatural keyword phrase on the net. That means the keyword should be selected as per your product and services in meaningful short phrases.

If it is applicable, regionalize your search engine optimization key words, because targeting on regionalized market will result more useful and targeted traffic with lower competition, in fact there will be more sales. For example, if you are selling product or service in Las Vegas, Nevada, then add Las Vegas or Nevada in your selected key phrases.

Select relatively less competitive keywords which will increase the probabilities of appearance of your site in top rankings.

After these considerations, you will find a good comprehensive list of keywords; now you can professionally and effectively optimize your entire site for all of your selected search engine optimization keywords, if you have series of landing pages with various services and products.

Another term which has very significant role in search engine optimization is Anchor Text; it has importance within inbound links. Inbound links from websites provides your site two benefits. The first and obvious is that these links can help your company by sending potential customers to your website. The second benefit is that Google and the other major search engines will see these links as votes of confidence therefore giving your website a boost in its rankings. When developing inbound links it is important to take advantage of keywords that your site might be targeting.

In the First paragraph I mentioned that you need keywords not only for your home page but for your other pages as well, it has paramount importance that your search engine optimizationo efforts should never stop after your home page is completed, your entire site should be professionally optimized for maximum results.

At the last but not least, do not make mistake in selecting higher competitive keywords, this will lead your website dropping in deep pages of search engine results.