The Most Important Part Of Seo

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The Most Important Part Of Seo

Internet marketing is a great profession.  There’s nothing better than building a web site, marketing it a little bit, sitting back, and watching the orders come flooding in.  

And in the arsenal of Internet marketing tools, there are none so satisfying as Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing methods!  Why is that?  Because SEO is free, for the most part.  Not only is it free, but it is continuous and targeted.  By that I mean, you can put forth a finite amount of effort and continue to reap results for years to come.  And of course, I mean targeted because your prospects pre-qualify themselves by going to the search engines and actively searching for whatever they are looking for.  

Thus you know that if someone found your web site from the search engines, then they are actively looking for exactly what you are offering.

The problem with search engine marketing is that its unpredictable and difficult.  There is no real right way to do it.  Sure, there are a lot of industry best practices to follow, but these change so often that it’s often hard to keep track of them all!

So I’ve decided to cut through the muck today and explain the most important part of SEO.  What is that?  It’s pretty simple actually.  The most important part of SEO is linking.

The major search engines have a long list of things that they use to determine how to rank a web site.  But the most important thing is links, by and large.  Think of links as “votes”.  If another site links to you, then they are in essence “voting” for your site.  

Then, the site with the most votes gets ranked the highest (usually, but not always…see, its tricky!).

So what you want to do is convince as many sites as possible to link to you. There is many ways to do this.  You can offer them something…like an eBook or free video in exchange for a link.  You could pay them to link to you, but the major search engines don’t like that and it can get you into trouble.

Finally, you can go out and create the links yourself, which is what you will probably end up doing.  There are a number of ways to do this, like article writing.  You can write articles, like this one, and post them to article directories. Most article directories allow you to post a signature file at the end with 2-3 links in it.  That is where you put your links to your site.

There are many other different methods of creating links, but article marketing is one of the safest. You see, if you build links too quickly, the search engines can get angry.  The best way to do it is slowly but surely, and that’s why article marketing is perfect, because you can only write so many articles at once!

Press Releases and Submissions as Part of a Successful SEO Strategy

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Press Releases and Submissions as Part of a Successful SEO Strategy

You may have a website, but a website is only as effective as its optimization. Search engine optimization encompasses many different activities, all of which boil down to making the search engines find you and your content, bringing traffic to and conversions on your site. Two of the most effective ways to do this are by publishing press releases and submitting your website to directories, online references that categorize and link to other websites – hopefully yours.

By submitting your website to fee-free directories like Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project, you can gain exposure, increase your page rank, become more visible on search results pages and, ultimately, get your customers’ attention before your competitors do. (The SEO Advantage.) Directories are often administrated by the equivalent of librarians, who accept manual directory submissions and are often experts in a particular field. That said some directories have been criticized for delayed approvals, rigid organizational structures and editorial disputes. (Wikipedia) The result was the inception of “wikis,” collections of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses them to contribute or modify content. Wikis generate meaningful topic association and offer the same advantages as directory submissions, but without the tedious submission and approval process.

While you’re submitting your website to directories and wikis, press releases should be a regular addition to your online content. If properly optimized, press releases have been proven to increase traffic to websites, improve search engine rankings and secure greater coverage in the media. (Shift Communications) Five questions can help you develop SEO-friendly press releases:

Is this press release consistent with my other SEO strategies or initiatives?

What are my website’s top keywords/phrases, and are they relevant to the press release?

Are there additional keywords that would be appropriate for the press release and enable it to generate more traffic?

Are there specific components of my website I want to emphasize or promote with this press release?

 Is it appropriate to add multimedia (video, podcast, images, etc.) to the press release?

Start with a strong title and, if appropriate, subheading with keywords; search engines give more weight to bolded headings. When writing your press release, determine the best keywords to include, then supplement them with colloquialisms that would be more commonly used in conversation. Try to mention your three most important keywords at least three times throughout the press release, but don’t fall into the trap of overusing hyperlinks. Focus on the important key phrases to avoid irrelevant search results or, worse yet, getting labeled as spam. The keyword density of your press release should always lie within 2 to 8 percent, depending on its length. By visiting www.keyworddensity.com, you can enter your URL and a particular keyword to get an accurate keyword density analysis.

Remember that press releases are informational announcements, and therefore should be kept between 300 and 500 words. The length of your press release should determine how frequently you use your keywords and how you use hyperlinks. Furthermore, be sure that hyperlinks aren’t the only way to redirect readers to your website; list your complete URL somewhere in the copy.

Finally, put it out there! Your press release should not only be permanently linked in a specified section of your website that readers can always find, it should also be in as many relevant online locations as possible. Once readers catch on to your content in a third-party location, they’ll start going straight to the source – your website. Optimize it, and they will come.

You can assign a person at your store to write, manage and submit your press-releases. The same person may be responsible for your SEO strategy. Alternatively you may consider hiring a third-party agency to manage your press releases. If you are an izmocars (http://www.izmocars.com/) Rainmaker customer, press releases and directory submissions are part of our SEO strategy. Our Strategic account manager works with you to identify press worthy events and specials, and we issue the releases on your behalf. Our online marketing specialist make and maintain submissions in directories that are relevant to your website, geography and products, including consumer-focused wikis, free and paid directories.

Please contact us to learn more about our Rainmaker program and how it can help you get more traffic to your website.

Related SEO Video Articles

Search Engine Optimization for Writers and Authors: Part 3

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Search Engine Optimization for Writers and Authors: Part 3

What You Need to Know About Website Structure

As writers and authors, we?re obviously creative people – but when it comes to the structure of your Website, it?s important you follow one important rule: Always make sure visitors to your Website find what they?re expecting to find, in the places they expect to find it.

What that means is:

Links on your page are blue and underlined.

You have a ?Home Page? and ?About Us? page and a way for your visitor to contact you. For your own protection, you need a privacy policy, and a CAN-SPAM compliance page.

Having a photo on your site has also been proven to raise conversion rates and increase credibility.

A Warning About Flash, Frames and the Latest Technology Like Dynamically-Generated Sites

Also, no matter how good you are at building Websites (or how creative your Website designer is) – don’t build your site with frames or extensive use of Flash – because most of the time, these design options can?t be spidered by the search engines’ robots.

And while dynamically-generated sites that use technology like ASP, Cold Fusion, and PERL can have an impact on your Website?s functionality, they often cause problems when it comes to search engine placement. (This is because the pages don’t actually exist until a visitor triggers the page)… And because a search engine spider doesn’t trigger the page when it crawls the code – as far as it’s concerned, there is no page there.

And the other problem often caused by this type of technology is that it puts question marks into the URL – and most spiders can’t read a link beyond the “?” in a link. And sure, there are technological ways you can get around this – but it can be tricky. So be sure you or your Webmaster have addressed all of these issues first.

Also, it?s a good idea to limit your use of graphic representation of text. Remember that spiders can?t index images – so don?t use them to represent your keywords on the page.

When it comes to the structure of your Website or blog, remember this: Don?t make your visitors search for anything (always have links back to your home page on every other page, for example), and give them the kind of high quality content that will keep them on your page now – and coming back for more later on.

The Definition of High Quality Content

High quality content is measured by how useful the information is to the visitors who come to your Website or Blog.

So the quality of your content is determined by: How well you have processed, interpreted and acted on the information you gathered to write your content in the first place.

How Content Relates to Your Meta Tags, Page Titles, Descriptions and Keywords on Writers and Authors Websites

If you remember in articles 1 and 2 of this series, we discussed what the best SEO strategies for writers and authors? websites are, and also how to use meta tags, keywords, page titles and descriptions to your best advantage.

So now you understand that everything is interrelated and all things connect to each other to help you achieve a higher ranking on a search engine?s results page when someone types in one of your chosen keywords or keyword phrases.

Keep the Content Real, Keep it Updated and Keep it Focused

Finally, the content on your Website or blog has to be real. If you?re giving answering someone?s questions, or providing them with new information, it needs to be accurate, useful and to the point.

You need to update the information – or add to it regularly – for both the spiders and the people who are visiting your site. Since your home page is the first place to be spidered, it makes sense that it shows the latest news or information. (And if this isn?t possible then this is where having a blog that links regularly to your home page can be an excellent SEO strategy.)

And remember when you?re writing the content, it?s important to think about what the spiders are seeing – and write accordingly.

For example, don?t use links that say ?click here? – because otherwise the spiders will think at least part of your page is about the words ?click? and ?here.?

And if you offer a service – be specific. For example, don?t just say ?our copywriting services? – say ?direct mail packages? or ?travel articles? or ?Website copy.?

Creating Your Own Link Strategy

Remember in Article 1 when we touched on having an onsite and an offsite SEO strategy for your Website or blog? This is where a link strategy comes in.

You’ll end up with a higher ranking and more credibility from the search engines when you have more links back to your Website – as long as they’re from RELEVANT third-party sites.

So if you?ve been trying to get as many links as possible – stop wasting your time. It?s not a popularity contest anymore.

The Way Search Engines Decide Which Links Are Most Important

No one knows the exact strategies used by the major search engines, but we know that they use a link analysis for search ranking placement.

So they looking at the importance of each link that points to your Website or blog, and they may also be looking at the context of the link. That?s why it?s a good idea to use anchor text with your keywords or keyword phrases.

Getting quality links from authority sites or sites that relevant to the content on your site can be a time-consuming process – but it’s worth the effort.

How To Create An Effective Link Strategy for Your Website or Blog

You don?t have to do everything at once, but a continuous and dedicated effort will go a long ways.

Step 1: Set up a link page where you can put links to other relevant Websites or Blogs.

Step 2: Decide what constitutes a ?relevant? link to you. For example, it might be links from authority sites, or links from pages with a certain page rank, or links from sites that sell to your target market. (It?s a good idea to put your link strategy and guidelines in writing)…

Step 3: Do your research and figure out who you want to get links from. You might want to create a database so you can keep track of your efforts.

Step 4: Send a request to the site owner or Webmaster and ask for a link from their site. Make it interesting and relevant for them – and explain up front what?s in it for them. If you don?t hear from someone within a week to ten days, send the request again.

You should also decide if you want to pay for links – although this is a tactic that?s continually coming under fire.

When you?re posting your links on other sites, it?s important to include text links if you?re using a logo or other graphic, and use your keyword or keyword phrase as well in the ?alt text? section.

And don?t forget to use a cross-linking strategy between pages or posts on your Website or blog. If you use ?anchor text? for each link – such as using the title of a post or article, most robots will follow the links to the other pages and index them as well. You might also want to add a sitemap to show all the text-only links on your entire Website or blog. And again, make sure that you?re using your main keyword or keyword phrases for each page of the Website or blog in those text links.

Submitting Your Website or Blog to the Search Engines

The final step to optimizing your Website or Blog is to start submitting your site to the search engines and directories. Start with the three major players – Google, Yahoo! and Live. One of the advantages of this is that most of the other search engines will pick up your site automatically once it?s listed on the Big 3 – saving you a bunch time and effort.

If creating an effective search engine optimization strategy – and carrying it out – sounds like it’s going to be more work than you want to undertake, you might want to outsource it to an SEO expert.

Although it?s a time-consuming process, and you won?t see sustainable results overnight, I hope you see that it?s not that hard, and it is something you can choose to do for yourself.

To make it even easier on you, we?ve created a checklist you can use as you?re going through your SEO process – so you don?t forget any of the vital steps.

Tales from the web: Making a gaming site and making money – Part 1

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Tales from the web: Making a gaming site and making money – Part 1

This is the first article in a series that I plan to write about trying to build a website and generate a positive cashflow from it. 

The Plan:

I like to play casual games on the web, so I decided to go with what I like.  My plan is to create a series of websites that host casual flash games.  Each website will have a targeted URL with a targeted home page.  The first in the series is Golf Arcade the url is www.golfarcade.net.  On this site the home page contains all games related to golf, but like all the other sites I intend to create, the site will include other game types.  I have decided to take the targeted approach on the home page with hopes to be more successful in getting ranked in search engines….I’ll let you know how that turns out. 

I will place advertising on the website to generate some revenue.  I’m not really sure what kind of revenue I can expect, but I don’t expect to get rich off the idea.  I think right now I would be happy just to make enough to pay for my morning coffee.

I’m using two advertising services to try to generate revenue from my site(s).  The first is adbrite and the second is google ad sense.  Both are very easy to setup.  You just create an account, and paste a little snippet of code into your web pages and voila, you are now an advertiser.  I’m going with two different advertisers to compare how well they pay.  My research on this topic gave me mixed results, so I just decided to try it for myself.  If one tends to pay out much more than the other, I will ditch the least paying one.

I’m using google analytics to track the traffic to my site, if you have never used google analytics I would strongly suggest you get an account, it’s free and gives you loads of great information.

I am using 1 and 1 hosting as my hosting company, they offer 250gig of storage space with unlimited transfers, that is a big bonus if you intend to host files that have any significant size to them.  My hosting costs are a month.

To build the actual website I did some searching around the web and found a good site that has a very large database of games and offers a nice xml feed.  I wrote some software to read the feed and download all the information I need for each game, so far that is working well.  I’m writing the software in Java and using Apache Velocity, a templating engine, to create the actual html.  I then upload all the static html to my domain.  Why don’t I just create a dynamic web app instead?  Well the answer is quite simple, I took this approach so I am not tied to any one hosting company.  If I decide to switch hosting companies then I don’t have to worry about wether or not that company offers jsp/.net/php service.

I launched Golf Arcade about a week ago, and I’ve already made several changes since it’s first inception, and learned a lot.

What I’ve Learned So Far:

I started working on the first website about 3 weeks ago, and have launched the first version of my website about 1 week ago.  Immediately after I launched the website I started thinking about how I can spread the word without having to spend a ton of cash (read: spend no cash).  The fist thing I decided to do was post a link to some of the games on my facebook page.  I figured that all of my friends that spend way too much time playing games on there would love to get another gaming site.  I posted the links and waited until the next morning to look at my analytics.  First thing the next day I looked at my analytics expecting to see hundreds of referrals from my facebook links, and of course I had 2.  At that moment I learned that this is going to be a bit harder than I thought.  For the next few days I spent a lot of time reading about website promotion and seo.

The second thing I’ve learned is that I should have done some research into the actual games before I decided to begin with a targed golf gaming site.  As it turns out, there are not a lot of good golf flash games available.  I chose the domain and the theme because I like golf, not because there are good games.  As a result of this, my first website really took a hit because the home page has just terrible content. 

SEO Tips:

Here are just a few of the tips I’ve found over the last few days.

Use the meta keywords tag Make sure your meta keywords match the actual content of your site Use the meta description tag Add as much unique content as you possibly can to your page Make sure all your images define values for alt and title, these two attributes are the ‘content’ of your images.

Over the next week or two I intend to go through my website with a fine tooth comb to make sure my keywords are relevant.  I’m also goin to focus on creating another website in my series of flash websites.  As of right now I’m leaning towards a site that is targeted toward Solitare games.

At the time of this writing my analytics show that I have had 153 visits to my golf website, which would be great except that 80% are from me testing things out.

Search Engine Optimization Demystified – Part 3

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Search Engine Optimization Demystified – Part 3

Search Engine Optimization Demystified

Part 3 – Road Blocks to Search Engines In the first part of this series Search Engine Optimization Demystified – Part One, we examined the players in the search engine optimization game. Understanding the industry helps us to see through the hype and separate the actual workings of the search engines from the mythology popularized by those looking to make a quick buck off of SEO services.

In the second part of the series Search Engine Optimization Demystified – Part Two, we looked at how the search engines see your web site. We went through ranking, indexing and the rules to follow to get the best results for excellent natural search engine results.

In this, the third article in this series I will explain how search engines can be prevented from ever getting to your site and how they can be restricted from parts of your web site through bad web development practices. This results in poor search engine ranking and low natural search traffic levels.

Meta Tags There are ways that the informed webmaster can intentionally instruct search engine robots not to index a web site. There are some good reasons to do this. For example, we have a client who only serves the government on construction projects and only uses his web site as an addendum to his bids. He does not want the general public finding his site since answering calls from the public would be a nuisance.

We added this Meta tag to the code of his site: <META NAME=\”ROBOTS\” CONTENT=\”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW\”>
It does what it looks like it does; it instructs the search engine \”robots\” not to index this page or follow the links from it.

Now before you get paranoid – I have never seen this done maliciously, but if you have a robots meta tag on your site it should say: <META NAME=\”ROBOTS\” CONTENT=\”INDEX, FOLLOW\”>
Since search engines assume this to be the default setting, it is not really necessary to have this tag on your site.

There are also meta tags that can tell the search engines what kind of content to expect on this web site. This may reduce traffic intentionally, for instance: < META NAME =\”AUDIENCE\” CONTENT=\”ADULT\”>
This tag is used by search engines to filter search results for people who set their search preferences to exclude explicit content.

You can see the META tags that have been used on your web site by looking at the source code of the site through your browser. For example, with Internet Explorer choose \”Source\” from the \”View\” menu. The meta tags will be in the top part of the file between the <head>
tags – if you hit the <body>
tag you\’ve gone too far.

Frame Sets A frame set is a set of web pages coded so that parts of your screen show content from different files. This used to be an easy way for an amateur to place a navigation bar on all of the pages of a site. Frame sets are not used by professional webmasters anymore due to the negative impact they have with search engines. Since frame sets first came out in the mid-1990\’s, coding has evolved to the point where webmasters can develop web sites faster and more easily without the need for frame sets.

The first page of the site is the most heavily weighted page by search engines. Weighting is done according to various factors, including the amount of relevant text on the page. Since the first page of a frame set is just a set of code instructions to the browser on how to find and use the files for the next page, what a frame set does is to \”demote\” all of the pages in a site to one level down in the page hierarchy. Search engines use the page hierarchy to determine the importance of the page within your web site. If your first page has no content on it, it will rank poorly, and if all other pages are secondary to the first page they will be ranked even lower.

A typical frame set page looks something like this in the code view: 
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>A simple frameset document</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET cols=\”20%, 80%\”>
  <FRAMESET rows=\”100, 200\”>
      <FRAME src=\”frame1.html\”>
      <FRAME src=\”frame2.jpg\”>
  </FRAMESET>
  <FRAME src=\”frame3.html\”>
</FRAMESET>
</HTML>

As you can see there is absolutely nothing in the way of actual words in the page that may be indexed by the search engines. You can understand now why utilizing a frame set would depress your search engine rankings.

In addition, search engines like to follow a nice set of hierarchical links in order to index the content of the site. While your menu with all of your links may be contained in frame1.html in the code view above, you are making the search engine go that extra step to find that menu. As we already mentioned, this is effectively how the frame set knocks everything down one level and makes the search engine jump through an extra hoop to get to your content. Search engines expect us as site owners to jump through extra hoops to appease them – they don\’t like it at all when the tables are turned and will rank your site accordingly.

Media-Rich Home Pages Media-rich home pages contain Flash, images, video and other multimedia files as the primary content. If you only remember one thing about search engines, remember this: search engines can only read text.

Search engines cannot read images or text written on images. They cannot read text inside of Flash movies or understand voiceover commentary from a video. Pdfs are often encoded as jpeg images and cannot be read by search engines when saved in this format. Search engines can only read text contained in HTML and in meta tags (which are specifically written for search engines).

One common misuse of Flash is the \”Splash\” or \”Landing\” page. This is a page that is just a picture or movie with only an \”Enter Here\” link on it. Since search engines cannot read the content of an image or Flash movie, this page looks blank to them. If the \”Enter Here\” link is also coded inside the Flash movie the search engines cannot see the link and will not be able to get to any of the pages inside your site regardless of whether they employ Flash or HTML.

Some web sites are written entirely in Flash and are not accessible to search engines as is. There are a few ways around the Flash barrier, like creating an HTML version of the site with meta tags and using additional navigation links in HTML. But why place a barrier to search engines on your site in the first place? We recommend using Flash for decorative purposes. We recommend that it only be used in such a way that if it were removed, search engines would still have everything necessary to index the site correctly.

To test your site\’s accessibility to search engines check if you can copy and paste the text from the web browser to your text editor. If the text is written in HTML you will be able to do this. If you can\’t, it is likely that search engines will not be able to read this text. A site done entirely in Flash or with images is usually the result of a company web development effort driven primarily by graphic design personnel with little or no input from web development professionals. If you are developing a website for business rather than for a movie, an event, or an art exhibit, you are better off listening to the advice of web development professionals who are trained in SEO concepts for maximum ROI through better search engine placement.

Other Landing Pages A landing page may not be media rich, but may have very little content on it in order to \”direct\” users to a specific location on the site. In Canada we often see landing pages directing users to click on links for either French or English versions of the site. This can be avoided by using scripts that detect the default language of the browser and direct the user to their preferred language without the need for them to click a link. Using language specific web site addresses is another good practice. Alternatively put the link to the choice of language on every page of the site in the navigation. This allows users to switch languages from any page on the site. This is important once you realize that search engines often display internal pages rather than the home page of a site on their search result pages. Well optimized web sites avoid low content landing pages. Dynamic Content and Menus Search engines cannot read text that is dynamically created when a visitor asks for it. A search engine will follow all of the links it can see on a web site. But a search engine will not type in search terms in a \”search box\” to see what other content you have in your database. If you have a database driven web site you must have \”hard coded\” links to the data that the search engine can follow, or much of your web site will be not be indexed.

Search engines cannot read text embedded in JavaScript or any other scripting language that requires the user to do something (like choose from a drop down list of options) to get to new content. Therefore, most of the drop-down type navigation bars you see at the top of web sites are actually barriers to search engines. Unless a search engine spider sees an actual coded link you will lose them. This is actually the most common barrier we will see on a website because inexperienced web design personnel are unaware of the fact that search engines cannot read scripted menus.

As an aside, javascript drop down menus are usually also less human user-friendly due to the fact that they difficult to manually operate, and they provide no navigational reference point since the drop down \’snaps back up\’ disappearing as soon as it is clicked. While there are again various methods to \”get around\” this obstacle, these are stop-gap measures that can and should be avoided.

Remove the road blocks! As we have seen, there are many web site design practices commonly in use today that put up barriers to search engines. The more experience your webmaster has in SEO the less likely they are to engage in practices that can confuse or mislead search engine spiders. But you, as a web site owner, must make it clear to the developer of your site that SEO is important to you. SEO is time consuming and requires training. Unless you request a search engine friendly web site – and pay for one – you are not likely to get one. If you have any of the above barriers in place on your site, we encourage you to give us a call today to find out how we can get you out of the search engine quagmire that you are likely in.

By Candace Carter, Back2Front – The Web Site People. December 2009

www.back2front.ca

Ten – Deadly ‘web Site Design Sins’ and How to Avoid Them (part One of Three)

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Ten – Deadly ‘web Site Design Sins’ and How to Avoid Them (part One of Three)

1) Do you want to be FLASH?

Having a whole site developed using flash by a specialist design consultancy can result in an exciting and even exhilarating media experience for your customers, the main points to keep in mind as to whether to go ‘All Flash’, ‘No Flash’ or ‘Some Flash’ are as follows:

Is your customer base likely to view your website via a high-speed connection, for example are you in the B2B (business to business) space?

Who is your main target audience? If you are selling to mainly home users who may still have a slow dial up Internet connection then no flash or a very limited usage of carefully constructed flash will be the only real option.

If you are an established business who has already built a strong and loyal client base and do not need to worry about search engines to achieve your expected or projected revenue, then using Flash for your entire website can be an exciting choice, especially if the design consultancy are excellent at what they do. A Flash website can be a captivating online experience, one which can both engage your target audience and project interesting dimensions into your clients interaction with your business, something which cannot be achieved to quite the same degree on the usually more flat and less engaging standard non interactive websites.

You need to be mindful of the technology utilised by search engines to find your all important content, as the web is based upon different technology to Flash and as such, at this current moment in time for the majority of website designs it is worth restricting the usage of flash. Utilising Flash to provide your target audience with a more engaging user experience can be a fantastic choice as long as it is built around a solid html based architecture; this will ensure that using this great media tool does not spell disaster for your online organic marketing.

If you are looking to run a campaign or advertisement on your website or are looking to incorporate a few elements of flash it can be a powerful tool to engage your prospective target audience. It will not be long when the use of streaming media and flash media becomes an everyday part of the web, as Telco companies entice more and more people away from the chains of dial up Internet unleashing the true power of the web.

2) Do not do a ‘DIY’ website design -

Generating the correct image for your organisation, whether small, medium or large is imperative in today’s business world, like no other time in history has it been more important for you to create the right image with your target audience, one that resonates with them, one that allows them to identify with you and conversely you with them.

People are now targeted every day with so much information and with so many choices it makes it imperative for you to communicate with your target audience so that they can recognise and differentiate you from the thronging masses, if you do not then how can you expect to gain their attention and ultimately their business? DIY web site creation at the outset may appear to be a cost effective strategy, and if you have the time and expertise to become an expert, (or at least produce expert quality work) whereby you utilise design tools to re-create the template into a unique custom looking design, then it may be a viable possibility. Though, for the majority who do not have the time, creative flare or technical skills to produce expert quality work you are more likely to produce low quality design that will be perceived as sloppy, unprofessional and third rate. For those who opt for a template design it will be a false economy as at first glance your business website may appear professional, though as with all template designs your business will have the look and feel of hundreds if not thousands and thousands of other business websites. Why create a whole business around the design, look and feel of a thousand of other websites when you can utilise the services of an affordable web design company who can create a unique masterpiece for you that will propel your business into a league of it’s own. In the crowded streets of this superhighway you want to make sure that you have another gear to be able to drop down into so that you can leverage full steam ahead leaving the opposition whirling around in confusion.

3) Navigational Design and Structural Architecture:

Using a Design house that can look at these elements of your website and build them into the design as they map out and structure your site is a key component of successful website design. The vast majority of web designers miss the point completely in this area, either the design is weak or the navigational design and structural architecture is all wrong. If you utilise a professional company who use skilled expert designers that work along side other professionals with diverse backgrounds in areas such as corporate learning and development and/or marketing then you are sure to achieve a resounding and satisfactory result for your business. These companies are rare, though there are a few who do exist, unfortunately they tend to charge a small fortune for their services, however if you look in the right places there are still companies out there who offer this quality of work for an affordable and fair price. You need to partner with a graphic design agency that have a diverse and multi-skilled background, a team that understands and achieves great design whilst always adhering to core principles of navigational design and structural architecture. Your business deserves a team whose sole aim is your immediate and continued future satisfaction. When these core principles are adhered to then during the SEO phase of your website promotions the need to spend unnecessary time and money on the navigational redesign & architectural modifications to your website will be minimised, if not completely eradicated.

However if you are in the unfortunate position of owning or being responsible for one of the many websites that suffer from this very real and prevalent problem, then there are a few Expert SEO (SEM) companies out there, whose extensive skill set and expertise can provide you with SEO solutions to rectify and undo all the damage inflicted by a previous novice provider.

Even with a great looking design, poor navigation will ultimately lead to fewer returning visitors to your website, and consequently less sales for your business. One analogy that springs to mind, is the business that has a prime position, fantastic street frontage and a great fit out, though with absolutely no parking in the immediate vicinity of the business, undoubtedly creating another unwanted road block between the customer & the business. Roadblocks push your potential customers to another business that is easier to deal with, otherwise known as your competitor. If visitors cannot easily find the information they are looking for within your site, or they experience error pages, broken links, or pages with too many moving objects (animations, scrolling menus and text, motion driven flash, marquees) then they are likely to either completely leave your website, never to return, or will miss important information that you wanted them to see. Create an environment where the customer wants to stay, a place where they can find what they are looking for, and a place where buying from you is made hassle free and easy, after all that is the reason they are looking at your website in the first place.

Keep your navigation simple by creating clear links on all web pages, do not provide the visitor the reason to click elsewhere, or even leave your site altogether.

Ensure that you do not fall into the trap of having endless web pages that scroll down forever. Websites who utilise this adaptation of one endless page of information are thankfully set to become a thing of the past, a little piece of unimportant Internet history.

Another terrible and deadly design sin is the use of the horizontal Scroll bar; it is a little like the sales man who has a weak and feeble handshake and cannot even comfortably look you in the eye. It is the ultimate design sin and one you cannot allow under any circumstances. There will never be a justifiable requirement to employ such a terrible piece of navigational design within your website.

Another important and usually overlooked usability guideline for navigational design is the need to help users understand where they’ve been on your website, where they currently are, and also where they can go to – Try to think about it as Past, Present, and Future.

Take the necessary time out to ensure that your website includes a sitemap, this will ensure that advanced users have the ability to navigate your web pages easily, some more advanced users will often navigate a website this way, at the same time as creating a page that is easy for human users of your website to understand you will also ensure that your pages are presented in a format that is preferred by some of the main search engines, this will allow them to index your pages and follow the deep linking within your site so as to discover more of your websites all important content. There are other methods which can be utilised to govern the way search engines view your site, one of which is through your robots.txt file, again something else that is better placed in the hands of a expert SEO company

Look out for the next part of this information packed series (Three part series, submitted over 3 weeks)

Twitter Tools Part 2

admin    Adobe After Effects     Part, Tools, Twitter

Twitter Tools Part 2

Twitter Tools Part 2

-by Al Ferretti and Skeeter Hansen

Twitter Tools (part 2 of 6): “Wordpress Plugins for your blog”

Wordpress plugins that integrate with Twitter

This is part 2 of 6, twitter tools and apps “Wordpress Plugins for your blog”. To keep things simple, we’re sharing a tidbit with a link to some of the more popular wordpress plugins that integrate with Twitter.

Twitter is becoming more popular and if you have a wordpress blog, it is a good time for you to incorporate Twitter into your blog.

Create Your Own Wordpress Twitter Widget Step by step tutorial

Top Twitter Links by TwittURLs displays the current top posted twitter links.

Tweetbacks for Wordpress The tweetbacks plugin imports Tweets about your post to your blog as comments.

Tweet This Tweet this plugin allows you to add a “Retweet This” button at the end of your blog posts. Run, don’t walk, to install this now. This is so much more effective than an “e-mail this” button according to everyone who has installed it.

Twitter Blaster The twitter blaster plugin lets your visitors update your Twitter stream.

Twitter Feed Like TwitterTools (see below), twitter feed is a fuller service plugin for all things Twitter. Allows prioritization, ordering and filtering of tweets.

Twitter Counter This twitter counter allows you to show the number of Twitter followers that your blog has. See the upper right hand corner of the screen on this blog for an example.

Twitter Tools The twitter tools plugin allows you to post tweets from your blog and the wp-admin panel. You can also archive your tweets and create blog posts from each of them. You can even create a weekly or monthly digests of all your tweets.

Twitter Widget Those who prefer the classic official “Twitter Widget” can use this plugin to sleeve the widget into their Wordpress installation. Based on the Javascript from Twitter.

Please leave us your comments about these wordpress plugins and any other twitter related plugins that integrate well with your wordpress blog…

Automotive SEO tips part ten – Black hat vs white hat

admin    SEO Video     Automotive, Black, Part, Tips, White

Automotive SEO tips part ten – Black hat vs white hat

Welcome back to the final edition of our automotive SEO articles. In this article we will explore some of the good SEO practices in the area of black hat vs white hat. The term “Black hat” or “White hat” are programming terms describing essentially good and evil. A “black hat” in another word is a computer hacker who is using none ethical search engine optimization techniques to gain page ranking. Black hat techniques can result in very quick search engine placements, but the result is not permanent. Google is smart enough today to detect many black hat SEO techniques and the result can be a full ban from the search engine all together.

While white hat SEO techniques involves time consuming link building, blogging, online video and more. This type of SEO is generally slower in pace compare to black hat practices, but the result is long lasting and will not drop from Google search results. A popular SEO practice today is what we call “Grey hat” technique, where the SEO expert will use a combination of black and white hat techniques.

So the next time you are hiring someone to SEO your web site, make sure to ask what type of techniques are used to better your ranking, if your developer insist on black hat SEO practices such as invisible JavaScript links, link farm submissions, and wordpress and form hacking scripts, maybe you should reconsider your decision. Thank you for reading this article, it is brought to you by Dealer Template Canada, your ultimate web solution provider for Canadian dealers. Find us online at http://www.dealertemplate.ca

“be a Part of SEO Marketing by Learning Distribution Services”

admin    SEO Flash     Distribution, Learning, Marketing, Part, Services”, “be

“be a Part of SEO Marketing by Learning Distribution Services”

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business.

You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimization company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.

<b>Step 1: Keyword Research</b>

What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimization”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “<a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=http://www.seo.higradeworld.com><b>Search Engine Optimization Australia</b></a>”).

Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases. Visit now – Picmoney.com

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings.  If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague or competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

<b>Step 2: Web Copy </b>

Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords.  The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)

           

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

•           Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;

•           Include keywords towards the top of the page;

•           Bold or italicize keywords where appropriate;

•           Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here to read more “, reword it to include your keywords, e.g. “Read more about our <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=http://www.seo.higradeworld.com><b>seo copywriting Services</b></a>”.

An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer Faqs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write this yourself, they can be located for free on the internet – do a search for “articles directory”).

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.

<b>Step 3: Linking</b>

Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.

Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organizations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.

How do I monitor my results?

Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.

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How To Create A Effective Affiliate Program Part #3

admin    Adobe After Effects     Affiliate, Create, Effective, Part, Program

How To Create A Effective Affiliate Program Part #3

This is a continuation from the article #2 Key To A Successful Affiliate Program – Part A which detailed other elements of the second key to a successful affiliate program, which is: Give your affiliates a reason to promote your product every single month. This one is enormous and this is the number one opportunity area for anybody who has an existing affiliate program, and wants to improve it dramatically or anyone who is looking to start a new affiliate program.

Create a contest or provide some incentive for your affiliates to promote a product during a certain period of time can be another great way to increase their level of activity with your affiliate program.

Affiliates are motivated not only by the money they are going to make, but if they can also receive some type of cool bonus or there is some type of incentive associated with any sales that are generated during a certain period of time, chances are you are naturally going to increase the level of activity that those affiliates are going to produce during that period of time.

In my own company, WishList Products, we have recently done a variety of different contests. We tied an affiliate contest to the Gary Vaynerchuk promo we did, which gave them the opportunity to win certain prizes if they generated certain levels of sales.

What was fascinating was the increased activity that we saw from affiliates during that period of time and it was substantial. Affiliates that had never had sales before were making five to ten sales during that period of time.

If you multiply that over the thousand of affiliates that we have, you can quickly imagine how much of an impact that that type of promotion has and so the key is with a contest, provide some type of incentive or create some fun reason why they should promote your products or services.

There is a lot of creative ways that you can make it fun to promote your products and services but with a contest or some incentive, you can count on the fact that there will be an increased level of activity from your affiliates.

So get creative there. Give your affiliates a reason to promote your product by creating contests, incentives, etc.

Thirdly, Give your affiliates something to talk about. So many people underestimate the value of just giving your affiliates something to talk about, a conversation starter. You want your affiliates to have a reason to write a new blog post about your service or products.

It can be as simple like something an update to your product or service or your membership site. A reason could be that you added a new hot piece of content to your membership site or are featuring a new element on your membership site that you want to get the word out about. Re-launching a particular product, including a new bonus, increasing membership price on a certain date are all reasons for your affiliates to promote or talk about.

You can see these are all examples of the types of things that your affiliates can use to start conversations to use by making a blog post or starting conversations on Twitter, Facebook or what have you.

These are all reasons to talk about your product or service and you are the one that is providing those to your affiliates. When you have different events, promotions, etc. going on, you must communicate them with your affiliates.

The five keys to a successful affiliate program: Number 1) Communication. Number 2) Give your affiliates a reason to promote your product. Number 3) Provide tools and training materials. Number 4) Remember the 80-20 rule. Number 5) Build relationships.

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