4 Steps to SEO Maintanence

January 26th, 2010

Once you’ve reached the top of the SEO pyramid, it’s tempting to kick back and enjoy the view. Be careful, as you won’t stay on top if you rest long. Top rankings take consistent work if you want to keep them. Your site needs continual new content and relevant links in order to beat the competition. Consider these 4 ways to maintain SEO on your site if you want to keep those high rankings.

  1. Check for Crawling Errors
  2. This can be one of the biggest difficulties for well established sites. Problems like server downtimes and sitemap publishing can sever whole pages from search engine circulation, especially recent content that’s just been published. These may seem like small errors, but they can be fatal, especially if your site has new relevance and timing is of the essence. Regularly check Google’s Webmaster’s tool, crawling frequency details, to keep your eye on this one.

  3. Check Your Google Site Index Number Fluctuations
  4. Google glitches quickly show up on your site’s index. Duplicate page issues and other penalties will appear as a reduction in the pages that Google indexes for your site. Keep your eye on this number for it’s the pulse of your site’s health. If you see big changes, you’ve got a problem.

  5. Check for Competition Changes on SERPs
  6. One of the most important reasons to do regular SEO housekeeping is your competition already does it. They’ll do anything it takes to outrank you, and likely constantly experiment with new content and link building to beat you. Watch your competitors, especially those that utilize SEO in key creative ways. If your efforts alone aren\’t enough, consider looking for website design help in San Diego to help with your site\’s SEO.

  7. Check for Broken Links
  8. A website contains endless links. It’s natural that one or 2 break down once in a while. Like household plumbing, links need consistent checkups to spot any damage. The only way to make sure everything is working like it should is to regularly check them. Broken links cut off your most important pages from the world, limiting your marketing potential and effectiveness to do business. Like any complex mechanism, your site needs consistent checkups to keep it running properly.

Increase Conversion rates on your site

January 25th, 2010

It seems to be the holy grail of webamasters every were , how to get more visitors to your site. Everyone knows that the majority of the battle is won, by having good SEO.

Simple things like esnuring you have original content, using relevant keywords, good meta titles are all very helpful in getting your site to page one and getting those hits.

Once you get them there what are you doing to convert those valued visitors into buyers.

Consumers need information and they need it quickly. It is no longer enough to have a telephone and email response system, as these things take tie to reply to. Your potential customer can turn very cold if they dont get the information they need quick enough.

So how do you combat this? Lancashire Rose blinds, beleive that one way of doing this is by using a live chat feature on your site.

A good relaible live chat feature allows you to engage with you customer in real time and turn the query into a sale.

Lookin around the internet there are thousands of live chat features around, so how do you choose?

There are some great free versions out there that easily intergrate with your website. We are currently using a free live chat software from Comm100. It is open sourced and free, it allows has a real time visitor monitor  and an offline messager.

Lancashire rose Blinds, have found that customers request a chat if they need extra information reagrding a product or just some more information before committing to the sale.

An added advantage is, that you can upsell to the customer, by advising them of other products they may need.

Live chat has us increase sales by on average 25% over the past year.

So why not give it a try after all its free, and it may just help?

How to Marry Novelty with Sensationalism and attract Web Traffic

January 24th, 2010

With zillions of websites on the web, and with millions more crowding in everyday, you need to stick your neck out to have your slice of web traffic, keep it hooked and bring in an increasing rush of eyeballs to your site.

Your Headline should make your Visitors Exclaim “Hey I should read this”

Novelties while presenting a topic with Sensationalism is one tool that can make a reader sit up and exclaim “Hey I should read this”. Now just this but after ready you piece de resistance you visitor should be tempted to refer it onwards at Twitter, Face book, Orkut, et al. Of course, it goes without saying that you too would do this. But there would be more pressing issues to engage you as the content creator.

How to stay ‘Real’ while being novel and sensational?

But how do you stay ‘real’ while being novel and sensational? That is the crux of the matter. If news is your forte then scan the day’s happenings and do a bit of history check when a similar thing happened last time around. Search on how those crises were tackled in the past and weave your story around this legacy. Social memory is fickle, and if your content reminds readers as to how the chaps in charge responded to an event similar to todays, then it could bring in exclamations of “ahs” and “ohs” from your readers.

9/11 a Banal Example of News

To give a banal example, you have had a headline like “9/12 the day that Proved America was Vulnerable”.

With this headline, reader would yell “Hey you idiot don’t get the date wrong! It is 9/11 not 9/12!”

Now the iron it hot with your audience in raw emotion. Tell them how immediately after Pearl Harbor, we went all out for the Japanese and did not stop till Hiroshima. Tell your reader it was Presidents Truman and Roosevelt who made America the victor for all they did after Pearl Harbor.

Now tell the audience that if a day after 9/11, on 9/12 had the USA gone for the enemy’s jugular by striking where it would hurt most then that would have made 9/12 the day that proved America was not vulnerable and no one could get away cheaply by attacking America.

Marry Sensationalism with Novelty and use it as your Signature to generate Ace Content

This is one extreme example of how you could marry Sensationalism with Novelty and use it as your signature to generate ace content that would not just attract web traffic to your site but also hold forever all the eyeballs that came in once, plus many more would come in hordes to your site keeping your visitor counter jangling merry all along for as long as you could keep generating content on any topic like the one given here.

9/11 is a one off case to increase Web Traffic, use the technique for any topic

9/11 is a one off case, but you can use the technique described here to increase Web Traffic using any topic - be it Black Friday shopping, Fuel Emissions, Kyoto Proposals, AHA’s initiatives, FDA’s new listings  the rising cost of Gas, et  al.

If you have the right attitude you can turn content into molten gold and mould it the way you want and then witness how the gold rush of Web Traffic keep growing till your server’s crash.

Some Disadvantages of Search Engine Optimization

January 23rd, 2010

Well maybe this could be true. I guess some search engines take advantage of website developers just to get high rankings from them, that they put out spam on the system so that website users will find it hard to search for what they are looking for. This will be a risk that website developers will undergo but there are some developers that really are reliable that they wouldn\’t do such things. Getting SEO to work in optimizing your website really costs a lot of risks. You as a website developer must be capable of coping with that risk and eventually surpass it all. You should be ready with the possible outcome. On a note to share with you some disadvantages associated with search engine optimization, you should be very careful about how it is done. Just a brief note about search engine optimization, is that it is the process of creating an attractive website that is plans to get to the top listing rank on the unpaid search results. Hiring someone to do search engine optimization work in your website has disadvantages. A lot of risks are associated especially with poor and in short term SEO. However, there are a lot of chances that there is an increase of receiving unsolicited emails or maybe some phone calls that would suggest to optimize your website. Another disadvantage is paying extra costs. Some search engines would really take advantage with you and would charge you beyond what you expect to pay to them. And this will be an additional cost in your part as a website developer or businessman who wants to create a website that aims to market its products and services worldwide. If you aim to have a top high ranking in a popular search engine, then prepare yourself to pay extra costs. But again, this would really depend on the kind of SEO company you hire to do the job. Another disadvantage of SEO is that it would create a lot of website sales or leads. Well it cannot be denied that leads and sales are needed to boost up your website but too much of it can add up to your costs. Well, the aim of website developers really is that they want website users to, frequently visit their website but this may be a disadvantage in their part. Most high ranked websites receive more insignificant visitors or website users than those of their targeted customers or website users. Naturally, there will always be some disadvantages and advantages of having search engine optimization work for you. Website developers must accept the fact that there will always be risks in taking search engine optimization as your business but the advantages of having search engine optimization exceeds more than that of the risks it would take. Just be careful in choosing for the right SEO practices.

Is Google Analytics All It Claims?

January 22nd, 2010

Google Analytics is a software program offered free of charge that provides comprehensive data about the visitors to your website. Typically, performance based internet marketers use the software because of their need to understand and optimize their visitor experience and increase conversions. It is by far the most used analytics software for highly visited sites. The reason for its\’ popularity has to do with two main components: it is free and it is versatile. Google Analytics can track most traffic sources, including: Pay Per Click, Search Engine, Banner Ads, Social Media, and so on. It can even track clicked links within PDF documents. These fine tuned tracking features are the core behind the tool\’s popularity.

Although it changes depending on where you read the statistic, Google is the number one search engine in terms of volume and accounts for more than 60% of all web traffic searches. Due to this popularity, Google is one of the most renowned advertising platforms in the marketing medium. Google has attracted many performance based marketers by offering quality, relevant, and free tools that support their ad network. Google Analytics plugs in well with their Pay Per Click program and allows for users to measure their sales success down to the keyword, the path traveled on the website and several other specific factors, depending on how advanced the user is in its\’ setup. The volume of usage in addition to the free access prove the stability and accuracy of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is free and accurate, but it also is scalable. Users are able to track as many as 50 websites with their analytics profile. This typically means different URLs, but user can also create sub-directory tracking profiles to easily monitor specific pages within a site as well. The most common use for this feature is for blogs. Many website owners like to use blogs for relevant information that relates to their main product or service. Keeping track of the visitors on those page can assist in decisions the website owner needs to make in regards to further monetizing their site.

Google Analytics seems like a complicated program because it is so comprehensive. It takes some learning, but is well worth the effort. The statistics provided by the program are invaluable and essential for fine tuning your website\’s performance. Some people don\’t have the knowledge base or the time to spend on a program like this. For those people it is important for them to find a strategic partner that can set this up. Don\’t miss out on sales opportunities, and get your analytics started today.

Link-building with Twitter — Improving Your Company’s Overall SEO Web Presence

January 22nd, 2010

In part one of this series we discussed the basics of Twitter, as well as how a business can benefit from Twitter through listening. While listening is always the best and most important way to use Twitter to benefit a business or organization, it is merely the first step. In part two, we will discuss marketing measures to take advantage of Twitter\’s growing popularity that are a bit more proactive.

While it is true that a lot of people use Twitter for personal connections only, there are many out there who feel that a nice blend of personal and professional information is their cup of tea. In addition to personal status-type updates (i.e. “where I am,” “what I\’m doing,” etc.), these users like to include information that relates to their field of business. Because Tweets are limited to 140 characters, these bits of informational wisdom are usually represented through links.

As any Internet marketer worth his salt knows, links are valuable. The practice of link-building is a key part of search engine optimization (SEO and is necessary in order to create a venerable web presence for companies of all sizes and industries. Because Twitter users often post links to Web sites that relate to their fields of business, this can be a great opportunity to link-build when approached in the correct manner. So, the next question is: “how can I get links to my site on Twitter?”

The first and most obvious method would be to post the links yourself. Although this method has some merit, it should be used with caution. The main SEO benefit of posting links to pages on your site via your Twitter account (or even your company\’s Twitter account) is that these links will most likely be relevant for your network. Chances are good that your followers are interested in the same topics that are pertinent to your business. However, you might run the risk of sounding stale. Even if your most dedicated followers continue to click every link you post, most people will lose interest if all your Twitter account brings to the table is self-promotion.

The alternative is to find other people to post your links for you. Specifically, influencers who have incredible bases of followers, and engage in a field that is close to your business. These social media stars are everywhere and, for one reason or another, have gained the trust of tens of thousands of followers. Just like print journalists and radio DJs of past decades, having Twitter\’s heavy-hitters on your side can bring good things.

How you ultimately build relationships with influencers on Twitter is up to you. It is probably not a good idea to direct message one of these individuals with a link to your site and request a re-tweet. Start slow. Begin by following the influencer and check out the kind of content they are broadcasting. See how their style and tone relates to what you have to offer. Then, start a dialogue with them. Ask them questions about what kinds of products or services they like, and why they like them. If you notice an interesting post they made, re-tweet it. Then, only once you have established a relationship, consider sending a link promoting a press release, new product or service.

Your link might not get around the first time, but if you are willing to put in the effort, it may wind up on hundreds of thousands of potential customers\’ screens. If you are looking for more immediate results, you can also add “Tweet This″ type links to your web pages.  These messages act like little hints encouraging visitors to your site that you want them to spread the word.

Ways to Mess Up Your SEO

January 21st, 2010

One of the first steps for any kind of proposal or initial meeting is researching who you are actually going to deal with, after all it could be a business you do not enjoy working with or don\’t know anything about (meaning you may have to spend a lot more time researching competitors, target markets and browsing habits).

An ethical SEO company will endeavour to offer you the best value services for your money, which generate a clear ROI for you, protect your website asset from any unscrupulous methodologies, and ensure that over time, your company will be able to conduct many of the strategies for itself.

A final benefit of working with a local firm is that the communication is usually much stronger in face-to-face business dealings than it is through email or instant messages. For much of the seo work, email works just fine, but for that added benefit, a local SEO firm might be able to understand your needs in a better way.

The top search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms or the methods that they use to decide both your pages rank and its placement on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. A while back, three-way linking or Pyramid linking was all the rage but they quickly became more costly than effective.

Using a bullet point or numbered system helps break up your copy into consumable pieces, aids in the clean design of your page and makes it easy for the reader to “go back” and reference previous points without wasting time reading through dense copy.

Many clicks and traffic comes from employees, the website owner and webmaster, technicians, SEO experts, the competitors of your business and your technicians and your experts, fraudulent clicks, spammers, bots, AND all the wannabes of all the above categories.

WordPress is the most effective blog software to use for organic SEO. There are a few very technical reasons for this. But even WordPress software needs a little tweaking.

There are some valid reasons that a course would be offered for a smaller cost, for instance a course that was teaching a number of people at one time, would enable a lower cost - but in my opinion SEO taught in a class is never going to be as valuable as one to one training with a professional SEO.

Look at existing social media trends and think how these can be applied to your site. Could you make use of a Facebook profile? Will people be interested in your tweets? SMO is constantly evolving, and websites need to be able to connect and interact with, whilst building up a profile within, existing communities

Follow these guidelines and you\’ll be off to a great start with your new SEO copywriter. Wherever possible, try to meet (or at least speak with) them before you start work. People, as we know, buy people: a capable SEO copywriter with a friendly, client-focused approach is a powerful ally as you promote your business online. Pick him or her carefully. Then start enjoying the benefit

Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Sites With Backlinks From Free Directories

January 20th, 2010

Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Sites With Backlinks From Directories

All search engine optimazation (SEO) experts will tell you that in order to have your websites appear highly in search engine results pages (SERPs), you need link juice. Lots of link juice! This means you need as many high-quality backlinks pointing to your pages as possible.

There are many ways in which you can drive traffic to your websites, such as paying for page impressions in traffic exchanges, buying a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising package, posting free classified adverts… or making sure that your pages appear high up in SERPs. Almost anyone will agree that the highest quality, most profitable traffic your website can receive comes from ordinary, every day searches – this is called organic traffic.

Why is organic traffic so important and profitable? Well, people arriving on your sites after searching for a keyword or keyword phrase are obviously already interested in the topic your page is about. If you’re selling a product or service related to that search, organic traffic is worth it’s weight in gold as these people are effectively free leads – I.E if they buy your product or service, that sale is to all intents and purposes 100% profit.

Of course, you could invest in a PPC campaign to guarantee you’ll appear at the top of Google’s pages for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, but many smaller websites just can’t afford to compete with the big-boys, especially in more competitive niches. Sure you’ll make sales from PPC, but what will your profit margins be like then? 10%? 5%? In fact many inexperienced webmasters, without the benefit of a large advertising budget (or even a dedicated advertising team, as in the case of large corporations) end up making a LOSS. This is why most webmasters who are working for themselves or for small companies look to driving organic traffic to their websites as the most cost effective solution to building their business online. In other words, they look to SEO.

The basics of SEO are simply to make your pages appear attractive to search engines, I.E. to have titles, subtitles and headings containing the keywords you are targeting, and to make sure that your content uses your keyword phrases as often as possible whilst still being attractive and useful to the human visitors you are obviously trying to attract. This is the very beginning.

In order to get your pages up to the top spots in SERPs you need lots of links pointing to your sites. This is because search engines ‘think’ that pages with lots of links pointing to them must be more ‘important’ (or relevant) than pages with fewer inbound links. Although it’s a little more subtle than this in practice, in general terms, the more links pointing to your sites, the higher up in the SERPs your site will appear. Remember, if you don’t appear in the top two or three pages for your targeted keywords, your site may as well not exist.

This is where directories come in. Online directories are big business. There are literally thousands of them, most general, some targeting specific niches. The best database of free online directories lists over 1300 of them, with more than 600 with a page rank of 3 or higher. Just imagine what 600 PR3+ backlinks would do to your site’s (or sites’) position in SERPs! Many directories offer a free submission service, with the option of paying a premium for a better listing, a quicker review time or to receive additional ‘deep links’. Some charge a one-off flat fee for inclusion and offer a lifetime lsiting, others require that you place a link back to them somewhere on your site. They all allow you to post a short description and to choose the anchor text for your link. The traffic you will receive from directories is negligible, the point is to get links. Preferably lots of links.

Submitting to directories is tedious and time-consuming. Even if you pay for some kind of semi-automation software that auto-fills the fields for you, submitting your sites to directories is an immensely dull and time-consuming process that most webmasters outsource. For this reason, many search engine optimization companies offer a manual directory submission service as part of their packages, or as a stand-alone deal. The price of these manual directory submission services varies quite dramatically, with some sites asking for up to 25 cents per directory, and some asking for as little as 10 cents or less. Our own manual directory submission service price list starts at just less than 10 cents (9.9 cents) per directory and includes submission to over 200 search engines, making us very competitive. Why not check out our price list today, and see how much you could save?

Adding a Sitemap for Your Blog

January 19th, 2010

Adding a Sitemap for Your Blog
You can add a Google sitemap to your blogger.com account and increase
your chances of being indexed in Google search engine result. You can add a
sitemap to your account to give Google more information about the pages in
your site to help Google crawl them more effectively. There are a few steps to follow but this is by no means a difficult process.

1) Login to sitemap account:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

At the top of screen you will see option to add site. Just type in the URL of
your blog (for example http://coolioblog.blogspot.com/)
Click on Ok button. Next you will get confirmation message. Your site has
been added to your account.

2) Now you need to verify your ownership of blog to view detailed
statistics. Click on verify link. Google offers two methods of
verification. You can either upload an HTML file with a name we specify
(which is not possible with Google Blogger account), or you can add a META
tag to your site\’s index file. Adding META tag via template code is possible so just select Add a META tag from drop down menu. It will generate code for you. Copy the meta tag code and paste it into your blog template\’s [HEAD] section in your dashboard. Here is how to do that.

3) Go to your blogger.com and login to your account. Go to your blog
and in the dashboard area click on template or look for the \’HTML\’ button and click that. You will then see the \’code\’ for your page or template. Paste the META tag code after [HEAD] tag but BEFORE the closing [/HEAD] tag. Then click the save template changes button.

4) Now go to back to the Google sitemap account page and click the verify button. Google will scan your blog or page for the meta code that you pasted into the [head] section of your blogs code and return a verified response to you. You should note that at times it may take a while for your blog or site to be verified. Generally if it still has not been verified within 24 hours then do the process again and double check the placement of the verification code on your template.
You can add a sitemap to your account to provide Google additional information about about your blog. Google will pkrocess your sitemap and provide information on any errors in the sitemaps tab in the web masters tools area. That\’s it. Not much effort required and quite possibly a lot to gain from it.

5 SEO Tips for Keyword Use

January 19th, 2010

Every online business can occasionally use some SEO tips for attracting free search engine traffic. If you are involved in any type of promotional activities online it is always nice to receive free online traffic. Well by developing a good keyword list and then properly placing them in the content of your site is one way to get you plenty of search engine traffic. This strategy is not at all complicated yet it is often overlooked by many online.

Let\’s review a simple 5 step keyword strategy you can put into place almost immediately to help increase the amount of free online traffic search engines can send you.

Headings

After developing a list of keywords relevant to your site make it a point to place your primary keyword in the heading. Also when using anchor text for linking to other pages or sites always try to use keywords since they will reflect more relevancy to search engines.

Use Sparingly

Do not over use your keywords in any content for a number of reasons. Firstly this will likely make for content that sounds funny to the reader. In addition since search engines consider this \’keyword\’ stuffing you will likely be penalized for this by having your rank decreased.

Place Most Relevant Words on Home Page

Choose only the most relevant keywords from your list and use these on the home page of your site. This is your \’banner\’ page and you want to be sure it is clear to search engines what your site is all about.

Use Targeted Keywords

Now what I mean by \’targeted\’ keywords is to use words that are more descriptive or specific relative to what it is you are promoting. For instance if promoting a particular \’brand\’ as opposed to just a \’type\’ of product use the brand name in your keyword choices.

This will help better define what you may be offering and also result in your visitors being more targeted. This is the difference between having buyers or browsers visit your site.

Domain Name

By all means be sure that your domain name contains the most relevant keyword you can place in it. You will not always (if ever) find the best domain name available to you therefore plan on being creative.

Proper keyword use is one of the simplest SEO tips you can implement to increase the amount of search engine traffic you receive. The strategy we reviewed involves nothing more than choosing the right words or phrases from an existing keyword list and properly placing them in your site content. With just the investment of your time and diligence you can easily increase the flow of targeted traffic you receive at your site.


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