Posts Tagged ‘seo’

There are numerous marketers who are convinced that their site's user-friendliness and the quality of text published has to be sacrificed for the purpose of search engine marketing. What they should know is that there are strategies that help make websites pleasing to both visitors and search engines. All it involves is balancing search marketing techniques with proper website design practices

The proper use of title tags is a very important yet most ignored SEO tactics. Every single one of the web pages in a site must be assigned unique title tags. For each page, the title tag used should accurately illustrate the page's content for the sake of all human visitors as well as comprise of proper keywords for the purpose of search marketing.

Tags should also be used for headings. In order to make content more organized, lengthy stretches of material are regularly split up by headers. Headings are distinctive as they commonly appear darker or in larger font sizes. For search engine optimization purposes, tags for headings should be used and should include keywords connected to the others found in the same page. This will improve the relevance of a page to a targeted keyword theme.

Maintaining an on-site linking framework is one more exceedingly beneficial SEO technique. Each one of the pages in a website are, in some way, connected but a tremendously functional technique to optimize a website is to limit the chief parts to no more than a small number of web pages and make certain that all other web pages point to them. This should make it easier for visitors to work their way around the website in addition to letting bots recognize which web pages to prioritize.

There are many web-based marketers who overlook the value of link labels in search marketing. Many marketers stick with words similar to "click on this link" or "here" and end up spoiling link titles' potential. Anchor texts should include suitable key phrases to reinforce the relevance of web pages to a certain keyword theme. Following this should, thus, improve the search positions of those web pages and the whole website.

Alt tags are also quite powerful website elements for search engine optimization (SEO). Alt tags containing key phrases should be given to each picture or graphic in a website. This will surely enhance the relevance of a website to specific key phrases. It will also aid readers if ever they aren't able to correctly load the photos or graphics.

By prioritizing anchor texts, link arrangements, and different tags, website owners are able to improve the quality of a website to visitors and bots alike.

Search engine optimization (SEO) does not, in any way, require marketers to sacrifice a website’s quality with regard to its usability and its readability. That is because there are strategies that help make sites more appealing to both visitors and search engines. All it involves is balancing site design and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques

The clever use of title tags is one of the most fundamental but most overlooked tactics for search engine marketing. A distinct title tag should be utilized for each web page within a website. Title tags should accurately illustrate the page’s topic for the advantage of all readers. Relevant key phrases must also be used for the purpose of search engine marketing.

In addition to tags for titles, tags for headers must be used. Headings are frequently utilized to break different subject matters in a web page and to make winding content more structured. Usually, headings for paragraphs make use of darer faces and bigger sizes. For search marketing purposes, tags for headings can be used and must contain keywords connected to the rest utilized in the same web page. Doing so will reinforce the relevance of the web page to a targeted keyword theme.

For the sake of proper SEO, generating an on-site link framework. Each of the web pages in a site link to each other somehow but a particularly functional tactic to optimize a site is to limit the most significant parts to only a small number of pages and then make certain that the rest of the web pages link to them. By making the most of on-site links lead to the website’s essential pages, crawlers realize precisely which to prioritize and visitors find it effortless to search their way around the entire site.

Anchor texts play critical roles in SEO too. Hypertexts must not make use of words similar to “read more” or “go here.” For the advantage of search engine optimization (SEO), targeted key phrases must be utilized in link titles in order to strengthen the relevance of web pages to a certain keyword theme and, therefore, enhance the rankings of those web pages and also the whole site.

Alt tags are also very crucial elements for search engine marketing. For each photograph or graphic in a website, alt tags with keywords must be provided. Following this will surely improve the relevance of a website to certain key phrases. It will also help readers when they aren’t able to load the pictures or graphics correctly.

By focusing on all tags, linking organization, and anchor texts, online business owners can improve the value of a website to both readers and crawlers.

In this ‘small‘ post we thought  to recap some of the techniques that can be used to market your new site. Most of these are already known, but it is always   nice to have all of them collected in one place :

• Yahoo Answers.

Answering questions at http://answers.yahoo.com can be proven an extremely efficient marketing strategy. People there leave thousands of questions and many of them remain unanswered. Answering questions, and solving problems in a category similar to your line of business (i.e. Computer Engineer, SEO, marketing, work from home, business models) can easily make you an ‘expert’ of the specific field. Being the expert means that people will want to actually visit your site and learn more. Further to this answering questions on yahoo answers can produce a number of backlinks for your site.

MySpace

MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users and over 300.000 new signups every daily. Getting this for a fact, you could considered that the returns from a successful MySpace campaign could be huge. So the more ‘friends’ you have on MySpace the better the changes you have to transform some of them into customers. First of all create a Profile using CSS to style your MySpace profile as close as possible to the site that you want to market (including any logos). Secondly start adding targetted friends by using the MySpace searching facility (i.e. by using keywords like freelancer,marketing). Some general advices on how you will go on are :

• Never spam
• Avoid the use of bot friends adders because you could easily get banned.
• Join as many relevant groups as possible and participate within the groups.
• Post interesting bulletins that provide useful information
• Send friend requests to users within the groups you’ve joined.
• Use graphics in your posts to catch the attention of the reader.
• Use catchy titles, anything boring will be ignored

Yahoo Groups

Yahoo Groups ( http://groups.yahoo.com/) is a great place for people to talk and exchange ideas. You can search and join yahoo groups , which are immediate related with your site (i.e. Freelancers, Wholesale,stocked products) and start spreading the word for you new web site. Note  that if a group has 2,000 members, and you post a message, you will  have  potential 2,000 users reading your message and maybe visiting your site. Members of the groups are always interested to learn information on new sites and ideas.

If you want to make group users even more interested on your site, you can offer some free content and tools on them. This will make your site even more appealing to them.

You can even create you own group and start posting. People which are interested in the subjects you post will became members of your group.

Stumbleupon.com

StubmleUpon is a great site, which allows people to share stories, information and links. Download the stumbleupon toolbar and ensure you click “I like this” to all of your websites, and have your friends and family do the same and click the “I like this” to all your sites. Also create pages specifically for stumbleupon that either is funny and odd, which can range from funny pictures to funny videos. This works well since Stumbleupon users love to browse sites that have odd and funny stuff, or even free stuff would work good as well.

Forum linking

Try to find ‘Do-follow‘ forums that are relevant with your site(s) subject and register. In all forums that you are becoming a member of, include your web sites url in signature of your profile. Having created your signature, start posting!! Create new subjects or reply to existing threats and use your preferred keywords within the links or perhaps catchy titles to entice clicks. Be sure not to SPAM otherwise you can get banned.

Blog commenting

Blog commenting is a great way to advertise your site and also gain some backlinks. It is usually in the center of many link building strategies followed today. You can easily promote your site, by identifying related blogs and comment on their posts. In most blogs you can include the URL of your site during the commenting procedure. Two things that you must note here is that in order to get backlinks, the blogs must be do-follow, and that you must make sure that your comments provide some value to the users of the blog (i.e. just don’t leave a post if you have nothing to add). You can easily find such blogs by simple searching the Google :

http://followlist.com/
http://www.stephanmiller.com/the-ultimate-dofollow-blog-list/

Craigslist.org

Craigslist is a great place to promote your web site and service. It allows you to submit your free ads Frelance jobs, freelance resources, freelancers, freelancing,consultants, consulting, contractors;but be sure not to spam it. Just one or two ads per week in a few select cities will do the trick. Don’t submit too many adds because you could be flagged or labeled as spam. As afinal note ensure to use catchy titles to ensure your ad is read.

Site maps

Sitemaps is the best way to help search engine crawl your site. If you want to have high rankings you must definitely include a site map in your sites and submit it to google. You can create a free site map using the following site.

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

When finished, then upload it to your site, then submit it to

Google using the link below: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?hl=en

Submit your sitemaps using Yahoo Site Explorer, similar format to

Google Webmaster Tools http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Directories Submission

Directories is one of the oldest way to get backlinks. Most Web admins already do this, but just in case you haven’t, you should submit to directories. A good list of directories can be found in:

http://strongestlinks.com/directories.php

Try to submit your site to high PR Do Follow directories. You can easily check if the directory is a Do Follow by clicking on a link inside the directory and checking on its properties. If it says ‘No follow’ then this is not a Do follow directory and you can skip it.

A site with many do follow directories is: http://squidooeventlog.com/dofollow-directories/

When you submitting to directories, ensure that the title and description of you submission is carefully selected. The words to be used there is what the Search Engines use to index your site. You can use the Web Masters Keyword analysis tools ( http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml ) to test the words that you must include your submission.

Tell a Friend

A Tell-a-Friend script must be installed on your site. These scripts enable you users to access the email/facebook/twitter/myspace accounts and massively send invitations for your site to their friends. If you have a joomla / Drupa / WordPress based site, it is very easy to download an install a module or widget/plugin for this. For all other sites you can download a PHP script for this. For any case OpenInviter is a nice and free option (http://openinviter.com/)

Search Engine Optimization

The way you site is structure and build is very important. There are a number of programming good and bad practices that can help you gain good search result positions. Meta tags, page names, breadcrumbs, alt text on images, are just few examples. SEO is an important aspect of any new web site and must be taken seriously. Some sites that contain really useful advice on this are :

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=3
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12
http://forums.seochat.com/
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/

Squidoo.com

Squidoo.com is a free popular platform that allows you to create overview pages. These pages, called lenses, usually simulate small one page blogs and include articles, photographs, videos and links. Such lenses could be a great marketing tool for you site. You can create a lense in an subject similar to your new site. There you could post articles and links to your site.

Social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites are really important for your new marketing strategy. People use them to share the Hyperlinks and Interesting sites they discovered on the Net. Posting your web site to these can create a stream of new visitors and also new back-links.

• http://del.icio.us/ PageRank: 8/10
• http://www.furl.net/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.simpy.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://del.icio.us/ PageRank: 8/10
• http://www.backflip.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.blinklist.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://bluedot.us/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://de.lirio.us/bookmarks/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.diigo.com/user/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.shadows.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.markaboo.com/ PageRank: 5/10
• http://ma.gnolia.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://linkagogo.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://netvouz.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.mister-wong.de/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.spurl.net/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.rawsugar.com/ PageRank: 6/10
• http://www.stumbleupon.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.digg.com/ PageRank: 8/10
• http://www.blogmarks.net/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.netvouz.com/ PageRank: 7/10
• http://www.taggly.com/ PageRank: 5/10
• http://www.lookmarks.com/ PageRank: 5/10

Article Promotion

Creating articles related to the subject area of your site and submitting them to the numerous free article directories can give you a number of backlinks. Make sure to use keyword analysis tools, in order to select the keywords that you will use in these articles. Some examples of such article directories are:

• http://www.thearticlesarchive.com
• http://www.ezinearticles.com
• http://www.goarticles.com
• http://www.articlecity.com .

Listen to your Users.

As a new site you are only going to have few users/visitors. One of things that will make them return back to you is to ensure that they can communicate their opinions /ideas/thoughts regarding your site with you (aka that their voice is heard). This will make them feel more comfortably with your site and feel that they participate in the process of making it better.

The information collected from such processes greatly helps in improving your site, because they can be used as bug reports and/or features requirements, and also assist in increasing the number of returning visitors.

To do this you can either include a feedback form on your site, or even better use one of the Feedback Management services that exist today (i.e. http://www.uservoice.com/ )

Alexa.com

Alexa is a popular place to allow users and provide reviews for other sites . You can register and regularly review popular websites on Alexa.com, making sure that at the end of your review you will add the URL of your site. It may not hyperlink automatically but may still bring some traffic to your site.

Newsletter

A newsletter box on your website that will allow all visitors to subscribe and receive updates. You must build a regular newsletter and inform your users, o new offers, changes and products. This will ensure that your users will never forget the site and increase the number of returning visitors. You can also have your users register their Date Of Birth and automatically send them an electronic birthday card.

You can use an email marketing service in order to automated some parts of this process. Some examples are: aweber.com, getresponse.com, constantcontact.com for the newsletter subscriptions.

Pay per Click search engines

I’ve listed this due to the fact most of you probably already know this , but I can’t have a list of marketing techniques without mentioning PPC. Google Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing are the big three. Other options are SearchFeed.com, Goclick.com.

For a analytical list of pay per click search engines see link below:

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/

Twitter

One of the latest trends in Marketing is Twitter.com, the microblogging platform. You can create a twitter account for your site, register you site address and description (i.e. The free online library) in your new Twitter account profile and start twitting. Start posting things (i.e. articles,photographs,videos,news) that are of interest to you and related to your site. If you have a blog you can automated this process by using special WordPress pluings and Joomla components.

People that are interested in your postings are going to soon become your followers. Everything you post can be seen by all of your followers, which in their turn can retwitt it in order to share it with their followers (i.e. imagine that you have 1000 followers and each one of them has another 1000 followers, Can you see the big picture ?) Having a big number of followers can greatly help you in promoting your products and services.

Facebook Fan Page

Facebook currently offers a great place to promote your products and service. Just consider the case that Facebook has more than 60 million active users. The returns from using facebook as a marketing platform can be high. There are tons of different ways that you can advertise over Facebook.

Fan Pages

It is very easy to create a Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages) and invite your friends (and their friends) to became fans of your page. In a while you will see that your fans pages can easily grow into having thousands of fans. This will greatly help you with branding your new site and products.

Facebook Application

You can create, or have a freelancer do it for you,or even buy, a silly small Facebook application. Such applications could include, games, puzzles , quizzes ,jokes of the day or anything that a user will want have and share with his friend. These application could be distributed around your friends and their friends( following the pattern of viral process) for free (yes free!!! if its free people will definitely want to try it). But in this application you could include a banner, the colors, and the logos of your Web Site. This is what Branding is all about.

Facebook Adverts

Final but not least, you could use the Facebook Advertising System (similar to Google’s ) to create a facebook banner for your new site. The huge difference with other systems is that facebook allows you to control the target audience of your advert (e.g. age,country,job,title)

Blog

It’s a proven fact that search engines love blogs. The question we should ask ourselves is why do they love blogs? It’s pretty simple, search engines love to search and find new quality content. Search Engines target to index high quality novel information . But ensure that the content that you post on your blog is original. Search engines do not like to see articles or content that already exists on thousands of other sites. You must update your content regularly in order to ensure better Search Engine Ranking.

But blogs are not only for search engines. Having a blog that includes good quality content will increase you user returning rates. Users may not come to your site to buy, but they will come to read. Even so, your site still will get targeted traffic, and thus higher rankings and publicity.

There are many free sites on the Internet that will allow you to create your own blog and they will host it for you. Some examples are :

• http://www.blogger.com
• http://www.ebloggy.com/
• http://www.aeonity.com/

If you are like me, you will prefer to host your own blog, so you will nee to find your own hosting solution and domain and then download and install a blog engine like WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com).

Having completed your blog, now it the time to start advertising. There are a number of directories out there which are targeted to blog owners. It will be quite a strong marketing policy to submit your blog to these Directories. Some examples are:

• Blogarama Link: http://www.blogarama.com
• Blogdigger Link: http://www.blogdigger.com
• Blog Catalog Link: http://www.blogcatalog.com
• Blog Hub Link: http://www.bloghub.com
• Blog Rankings Link: http://www.blogrankings.com
• Blog Search Engine Link: http://www.blogsearchengine.com
• Blog Wise Link: http://www.blogwise.com
• Blog Lines Link: http://www.bloogz.com
• Blog Pulse Link: http://www.blogpulse.com
• Blog Universe Link: http://www.bloguniverse.com
• Blog TreeBlogarama Link: http://www.blogarama.com
• Blogdigger Link: http://www.blogdigger.com
• Blog Catalog Link: http://www.blogcatalog.com
• Blog Hub Link: http://www.bloghub.com
• Blog Rankings Link: http://www.blogrankings.com
• Blog Street Link: http://www.blogstreet.com
• Blog Wise Link: http://www.blogwise.com
• Globe Of Blogs: Link: http://www.globeofblogs.com

To turn an idea, product or service into an online money-making venture, every entrepreneur must utilize effective and proven Internet marketing strategies. The evolving world of online marketing presents different strategies for people to test for their products or services. To devise a plan or marketing campaign that will work, you must first identify company goals and the timeline for achieving those goals. Once you have laid out the foundation, you can start implementing strategies to promote the products or services. Below are some Internet marketing strategies to consider.

Blog Commenting
Link building is an important part of promoting your products or services to the public. People like clicking on links that lead them to a web page that offers them something they can benefit from. One way to build links is commenting on blogs but it is important to go on blogs that are relevant to your niche. When you find a blog post, there is a text field that you can place a link when commenting. This link will point to your website and people who read the comments can find your products.

Forum Posting
Another way to promote your site is to post on forums. When you find forums that are relevant to your business, you can ask questions to members or answer other questions. You can leave your link as a signature so that people can click on and land on your page. Placing this link is another method of building links and the more links you build, the chances of you getting discovered by search engines increases.

Blogs
Whether your business is an e-commerce site or you offer some sort of service, you can start a blog to promote your business. When starting a blog, it is important to keep up with blog posts so that you always have fresh content. Your customers and visitors will be more interested and inclined to return when you have a reputation of updating your blog. In your blog you can write posts on new products, new services, descriptions of your products, news, opinions and so on. You will also get feedback from your customers and readers which can help you understand where your business stands.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is not necessarily a strategy but rather a must for any Internet company that wants to grow. Search engine optimization involves a number of tactics, tools and strategies but the underlying purpose is to get on the search engine map. That means that you use various strategies, such as link building, to improve your rankings on major search engines. The higher your rankings, the more people will come across your site. Search engines will also place more value on your site as your rankings improve. This helps promote your products or services and will help you gain more visitors.

Social Bookmarking
The Internet is all about networking and communicating with your audience. To promote your business, it is very important to use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and other social bookmarking tools including Digg, Delicious and even StumbleUpon. When you use these platforms, you are placing links to your website for people to click on. In other words, you adding a virtual bookmark for people to come back to. Social bookmarking sites and other networking sites are great ways of understanding your audience and promoting your products or services.

Directory Submission

The Internet holds a number of directories that are willing to hold a link to your site for free or for a small fee. Posting your site into good quality directories and in the appropriate link categories can help potential customers to became more aware of your brand or products. This can also help your site get better rankings by search engines.

Affiliate Marketing
Many online businesses and internet marketers use affiliate marketing to help promote businesses. Affiliate marketing involves revenue sharing between a website owner and an online merchant. If you are selling products or services, it is a good idea to try to get advertisements on another website. When this website receives traffic, visitors will find your ads and click on them to land on your online store. Although there is an exchange of profits between the merchant and the site owner, this is a highly effective way of promoting.  Both parties can benefit from affiliate marketing but it is important to choose a merchant or affiliate website carefully. This Internet marketing strategy is not only effective in promoting a business but also getting leads.

• Pay Per Click (PPC)

This campaign allows the affiliate site to earn a certain amount of money when someone clicks on the ad on his site. The merchant will also make a certain amount of money.

• Pay Per Sale (PPS)

This affiliate marketing campaign involves actual sales. When a merchant advertises on an affiliates site and a sale is made, the affiliate site will earn a certain percentage of the sales.
Pay Per Lead (PPL): When merchants place ads on an affiliates site and a customer registers at the merchants site as a result, the affiliate site will earn a certain amount of money.

Banners

Traditional Banners are still an effective way to advertise you rsite and services. By placing banners into high quality and highly ranked sites you can earn new customers and users. Along with placing banners in highly ranked sites can also help you raise your site’s rank as well.  If you do not want to pay to get your banner published, you can enter into a banner exchange program (there are a few out there).

Whether you are a freelancer trying to promote your website or you have your own online business, it is important to get discovered on search engines. We all know that the key to web promotion is doing search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. It is important to pay attention to the ways that online marketing is evolving so that you can keep up with the latest tactics.

SEO and online marketing strategies are constantly changing as the market becomes more and more competitive. No marketing campaign is successful without link building.

For a successful link building campaign, you must tap into social media. Social media is a whole other world these days and it includes Digg, Delicious, facebook and especially Twitter these days. Google has been paying attention to Tweet counts which can really benefit your web promotion. Adding links into great content and placing links in tweets is an effective way to get on the search engine map and to generate traffic.

A year ago, you could have submitted over a dozen articles that include links to directories and get top ranking for various search terms. Today, you must be careful with duplicate content. The important thing to remember is having quality content with a link that points to your site.

When you build links, you must remember that search engines accept links coming from valuable site and social media networks. The more value the search engines place on links point to your site, the higher you will rank. In general links coming from .edu domains are considered more trustworthy and thus are preferred by the search engine.  Finding for example blogs in edu domains can be easily achieved by using simple Google search instructions, some examples are given below:

• site:.edu inurl:blog – Search for blogs that are hosted on edu domains
• site:.edu inurl:blog post a comment – Search for blogs that are hosted on edu domains and allow you to post comments

But please,  take care of how you are going to use these techniques. Overdoing it  may have a negative impact on you (or your company).

The New Rules of Web Promotion and SEOWhile posting links for your link building campaign you must prefer  sites that allow do follow links. Sites and blogs that allow Dofollow links in reality instruct a search engine to follow the links that are discovered during crawling their pages (in reality such sites they simply don’t add the nofollow tag on the posted links) . This is what actually  search engines look for in order to count those links as back links for your site and give you a better ranking. You can easily find blogs and directories that provide the Do follow option simple by searching into Google with the key words “do follow blogs”. Another way of detecting dofollows is by using a Mozilla Firefox  pluging that will show if a link on a page uses the nofollow tag :https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5687

As final thought  always consider , that no matter what SEO techniques you are following at the end is the content that matters. If you post great content on your site, that people will like to read, and share, search engines will detected it and send you more traffic. Also don’t posts on blogs and forums, simply to post (aka for the link only). While posting on forums and blogs, try to share content and ideas that people will like. Be original on your posts and readers, will use your posts signature to follow you back to your page. Try to make your on followers, people that like your ideas and your writing.