Anyone who runs a website should be aware of a few basic search
engine linking tactics. Used properly you can interlink your website so
that Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines will rate you
higher in both page rank and search engine results for your keyword/key
phrase niche terms. If you’re unaware of what internal linking means,
here’s a basic overview.
Internal linking involves the links on your website that point to
other pages on your website. Internal linking is very important because
it allows the search engine spiders, those automated bots that scour the
Internet looking for information, to find all of the pages on your
website. In comparison, external linking are links that are on your
website which link out to other websites, and there are specific tactics
for those as well. In this article, however, we’re going to cover a few
simple tactics and strategies to get your internal linking up to speed.
When you’re developing your website, you will tend to put a whole lot
of pages of similar information tailored to a specific niche or subject
that you want to convey to your visitors. You probably will have
information, news, how-to articles, tips and sales pages, where informed
visitors can buy your products or services. Your internal linking
structure will not only benefit your visitors, but it will help you rank
better with the search engines as well.
Having a good navigation system makes Google and Yahoo happy, and in
turn, they will reward because you are doing things to improve the
visitors’ website experience. So, for example, if you have an internal
linking structure that is seamless, intuitive and allows your visitors
to quickly find what they’re looking for, search engines will give you
more page rank, index more of your web pages and and return higher
search results for user queries.
Why? You have taken the time to help your website visitors have an
excellent customer experience. As result, your tactics and strategies
should be geared towards giving arriving visitors not only the
information that they seek, but have it presented in a way that they
will and search engine bots will love.
So how do you accomplish this? There are a few basic tactics, you can
use that will increase your internal linking structure right off the
bat.
Number 1 – use the rel=”nofollow HTML tag for pages that you don’t
want to pass rank to Google. For example, let’s say you had a three-page
site. Now, we all know that most people have more than three pages for
an entire website; however, this will make it easier to follow.
The first page is your home page which gets 100% of the search engine
ranking and love. The second pages are an information or
information/sales page, with the third is a checkout page. If you don’t
use the nofollow tag on one of the pages, both pages will be passed half
of 50% each for the link from the home page. So, they’ll each get 25%
of the ranking and love passed through from the spiders. The search
engine spiders will naturally give your home page the best page rank and
index it first.
Say, you want to link to the information/sales page and
make sure that a lot of people find it, because the information page is
what will sell your product or service. For ranking and indexing
purposes, you consider the checkout page as useless, so you don’t care
if the search engines find it or not. In fact, you’d prefer it if they
didn’t index it all. What do you do?
When you link from your home page, you can do one of two things.
Link to the information page only from the home page. Link to both
pages but use the no follow tag to the check out page. In that way, if
someone arrives who is already sold on your product, they can go
directly to your checkout page and buy the product. However, if it is an
uninformed visitor, they can clickthrough to your information/sales
page or they click on the indexed Google or Yahoo link that’s been
picked up by the spider
Two things happen with scenario #2. You give the customer/visitor the
option. Because, the search engine is applying SEO love to one page and
not two, the page rank passed will not be 25% and 25% for each page,
but 0% for the check out page and 50% for the information page which
needs it. You maintain the search engine indexing and page rank for
those pages that are important. This is just one thing to consider when
setting up your website.
This is just one thing that needs to be considered when setting up
your website. Professional SEO firms use this algorithm in order to get
specific pages on your website to rank hire and return results in the
search engine results pages that are much higher than a other pages like
your checkout pages which you don’t care about.
Number 2 – Add extra links in your navigation area or footer area
that link to important pages and main sections on your website. This
extremely easy tactic is often overlooked by many websites, but it does
return very good results for deep linking, and most SEO firms will
review your footer links when they you on as a candidate in order to
utilize that other form of deep linking. The reason for this is that so
many people forget to do it, and many Web designers add really cool
buttons, images and all kinds of funky image stuff that do nothing to
increase your page rank or your results in a search engines. You should
remember that search engines can’t follow image links or links created
in JavaScript. So, you want to add simple text links that the robots can
follow the indexing your website more fully.
These are only two of the tactics that are covered when you hire a
professional, savvy SEO firm to optimize your web layout and linking
structure.
Showing posts with label search engine optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search engine optimization. Show all posts
October 17, 2012
Video Search Engine Optimization By Randy Zlobec
Video Search Engine Optimization – Most of us know that a site that’s
well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting
high traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about
optimizing your video as well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia
content is becoming a much more popular way of distributing
information, correct video search engine optimization is important.
For instance, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine.
YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site.
For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.
Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.
Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit your video. This places you in the queue of web crawlers, and means you’ll be indexed more quickly and more often than if you hadn’t bothered to submit. The more regularly your content is crawled, the better your chance of rating well on search results.
Index your site on other engines than Google or YouTube. They can spread your video to other search engines you may not have thought of. For instance, indexing your site on Blinkx will cause it to show up on Ask and MSN, among others.
One important part of your strategy should be a series of related videos. When a viewer sees a video online that he or she likes, there’s a good likelihood that this viewer will look for others like them. While a single great video will be popular and welcomed, you’ll do even better if it’s part of a series.
Use an embedded video player, too. Many viewers will be more inclined to view your submission if it’s part of your site or blog than if they had to go to your video hosting service to see it. However, you should avoid players that use only Flash. Don’t use pop-up players, which annoy more people than they amuse, and will actually cause you to lose views.
The more views you get, the more likely you are to be picked up by other sites, linked to, and rank well on video searches. You can even customize embedded video players to display playlists related to your company, and adjust the layout, and other information.
Create traffic by placing a video search box on your site. This adds unique content and boosts ad revenue. Make sure that you create a video of the appropriate length for your audience, and that you’re looking for the right response.
You can use analytics to find out how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to tell you which of your videos get the best response. Once you know this, you’ll be able to decide which content should be linked first on your home page.
Remember that no webcrawler has ever bought a product or a service. If you’re a local business using video to advertise, clicks are a lot less important than calls. Include a call to action with your contact information as part of your video – thumbnails are an excellent way to do this. You can use YouTube to create thumbnails at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks. Making sure that you have both a local listing and a video listing on Google’s Search Engine Results Page also increases your likelihood of getting visits.
You may also wish to make sure that your videos are high enough quality for and in the right format for television. Google TV is very affordable, and lets you create closely targeted video.
Don’t use Active X controls and export all files as swf format. Use Google Video sitemaps to help with navigation, and build a separate page for each video, rather than hosting many videos on the same page. Use a simple text title and description, and optimize that page as you would any other. Then, link to it from the index page.
Descriptions and titles need to be consistent across all your sites, and file names should descriptive and make sense to the viewer. Remember that Different communities require different approaches. Prominent keywords can help on many sites. However, while keyword rich content will help videos hosted on your site be noticed by Blinkx or Truveo, it won’t help on YouTube.
You’ll need to get the attention of the community in general. Video responses to popular, related videos can help get others to visit your contribution. Your content will appear in close proximity to videos that are already popular. Make sure you include an active URL in the description of your video, and end the video with a mention of the link. Annotations can help you link to other YouTube videos. Be sure to allow comments!
Never tag with irrelevant search terms, no matter how popular they might be. Remember that you need to appeal to real people, rather than just optimizing blindly. While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause people to pass you by. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you’ll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.
Video search engine optimization is an important part of any video marketing strategy. If you’re planning to market your business or organization using multimedia content, creating it correctly and surrounding it with the right keywords and other information can help it be noticed. Before you submit a video, make sure it’s optimized.
For instance, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine.
YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site.
For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.
Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.
Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit your video. This places you in the queue of web crawlers, and means you’ll be indexed more quickly and more often than if you hadn’t bothered to submit. The more regularly your content is crawled, the better your chance of rating well on search results.
Index your site on other engines than Google or YouTube. They can spread your video to other search engines you may not have thought of. For instance, indexing your site on Blinkx will cause it to show up on Ask and MSN, among others.
One important part of your strategy should be a series of related videos. When a viewer sees a video online that he or she likes, there’s a good likelihood that this viewer will look for others like them. While a single great video will be popular and welcomed, you’ll do even better if it’s part of a series.
Use an embedded video player, too. Many viewers will be more inclined to view your submission if it’s part of your site or blog than if they had to go to your video hosting service to see it. However, you should avoid players that use only Flash. Don’t use pop-up players, which annoy more people than they amuse, and will actually cause you to lose views.
The more views you get, the more likely you are to be picked up by other sites, linked to, and rank well on video searches. You can even customize embedded video players to display playlists related to your company, and adjust the layout, and other information.
Create traffic by placing a video search box on your site. This adds unique content and boosts ad revenue. Make sure that you create a video of the appropriate length for your audience, and that you’re looking for the right response.
You can use analytics to find out how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to tell you which of your videos get the best response. Once you know this, you’ll be able to decide which content should be linked first on your home page.
Remember that no webcrawler has ever bought a product or a service. If you’re a local business using video to advertise, clicks are a lot less important than calls. Include a call to action with your contact information as part of your video – thumbnails are an excellent way to do this. You can use YouTube to create thumbnails at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks. Making sure that you have both a local listing and a video listing on Google’s Search Engine Results Page also increases your likelihood of getting visits.
You may also wish to make sure that your videos are high enough quality for and in the right format for television. Google TV is very affordable, and lets you create closely targeted video.
Don’t use Active X controls and export all files as swf format. Use Google Video sitemaps to help with navigation, and build a separate page for each video, rather than hosting many videos on the same page. Use a simple text title and description, and optimize that page as you would any other. Then, link to it from the index page.
Descriptions and titles need to be consistent across all your sites, and file names should descriptive and make sense to the viewer. Remember that Different communities require different approaches. Prominent keywords can help on many sites. However, while keyword rich content will help videos hosted on your site be noticed by Blinkx or Truveo, it won’t help on YouTube.
You’ll need to get the attention of the community in general. Video responses to popular, related videos can help get others to visit your contribution. Your content will appear in close proximity to videos that are already popular. Make sure you include an active URL in the description of your video, and end the video with a mention of the link. Annotations can help you link to other YouTube videos. Be sure to allow comments!
Never tag with irrelevant search terms, no matter how popular they might be. Remember that you need to appeal to real people, rather than just optimizing blindly. While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause people to pass you by. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you’ll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.
Video search engine optimization is an important part of any video marketing strategy. If you’re planning to market your business or organization using multimedia content, creating it correctly and surrounding it with the right keywords and other information can help it be noticed. Before you submit a video, make sure it’s optimized.
October 13, 2012
Personalized Search and Your SEO Firm
When looking at Google, one is struck by the somewhat Orwellian nature of entering a search term and being watched by Big Brother in a dispassionate, detached yet interested manner. When looking at the patterns people use in searching, it does come close to that totalitarian character from the George Orwell novel, 1984, but that is the truth of our times. Google is neither good nor evil. It just IS, and with that realization, people should adapt to the new SEO frontiers and how to not only deal with but capitalize on the wealth of information that search engines collect.
Let’s drop the Big Brother analogy, because when we started looking for things on the Internet, that became just another part of our paradigm shift towards the belief that anything we searched for on the Net was just out of our reach in the search results. Collecting data and disseminating it is a fact of life. As a business, one should rapidly get used to the idea and seek constructive, professional ways to harness this power. Because, in this case knowledge is truly power, and if you or a company that you hire can get a handle on the niche you want to control and dominate to deliver your sales message or well-placed, online advertising, then you’re ready to watch your sales double, quadruple and more.
The true value an SEO expert on staff or a firm that understands the value of search engine optimization can transform your company. The concept is really very simple: put your company, product or service in the traffic or search results of people who are looking for your product or service. That’s it. Success on the Internet.
When you look at it that way, it doesn’t appear to be so hard to conquer. What you may fail to realize is that there are millions of companies and businesses out there that have already realized this fact and have gone on to seek their fortune in that realm. You will need an edge, something that most of your competitors lack.
This is where the basic principle of personalized search comes into play. You see, whether you’re a millionaire or Joe-Nobody surfing the Net, every time you query Google or any other search engine for information, that query data is stored in a database. It is then tabulated, and cross-tabulated with other things you and others have searched for. On a personal level, the search engines build a profile of your search habits over time. Like artificial intelligence, the search engines long to understand you, your interests and habits. As you search and surf, you will begin to see an eerie thing happen – more and more relevant search results will begin to pop up as you type.
Before you run screaming back into the dark ages, this is a good thing. For example, if you’ve shown an interest in fishing while our neighbor searches for musical instruments. When you search for “bass”, the search engine will begin to return fishing results, while your neighbor who searches for the exact same term, “bass” will get back musical instruments that are relevant to him – bass fiddles, bass drums, etc. This is personalized search results.
Now that you understand the concept, let’s talk about how you can use it in your business in order increase sales in your business. These personalized search results, you need to either learn or hire an SEO firm that is familiar with this major shift in how search engine optimization is going. Google is currently testing the waters with this form of personalization, and you need to be signed up with one of their services in order to get this kind of personalization. Theses services include: Adwords, Google Toolbar, Gmail and the like. Through these various forums, Google is learning about you and your preferences.
When you search through Google, it places a cookie which is a unique identifier on your machine. It doesn’t do anything, but identify you as a user of their service. No biggie, right? It will be just as easy for them to use this technology to collect user data in order to personalize your search. Right now, they’re waiting to see if there’s screaming in the streets from users who abhor any kind of data collection. More than likely, it will go by unnoticed by most. As a business, you need to be on the cutting edge of this new technology and have either an expert or a firm working towards utilizing this major upgrade in order to take you to the next level of the Internet.
Truly good search engine optimization firms are already preparing for this major shift, using things like “clean” machines for data collection and in how they report on Google’s ranking of data to their clients. Clean machines are one’s that have had no Google programs or cookies dropped on it. This will be a baseline machine with results for the client that are delivered as a snapshot of what they user would see if their machine was Google-less.
First, the good news. Account holders with the search engine giant will probably not be deluged with certain products based on their profiles, but their entire surfing and querying history will be reviewed and results will be skewed toward the user’s industry.
Then, there’s the bad news. Search engine optimization firms will have a rough time trying to demonstrate these results because the client will more than likely be using a Google program on personal machines, so the results won’t match with the SEO firm.
What all this means is that the company needs to establish a level of trust in the professional skills of the firm they choose. In return, the SEO firm needs to take the time to explain in detail how the new search engine results work showing how these results can appear totally different from machine to machine and why this happens. As well, the firm needs to have the technical skill to be able to delve into the client’s machine, look at the current cookies onboard and explain how this is affecting what results they’re getting.
When setting up a campaign, companies will have to take more into account when starting out. Having a good SEO firm onboard will simplify this latest level of complexity quite a bit. Being able to utilize personal search results and consumer profiles is just a step away, and it takes a high-level of skill to deal with it effectively.
Let’s drop the Big Brother analogy, because when we started looking for things on the Internet, that became just another part of our paradigm shift towards the belief that anything we searched for on the Net was just out of our reach in the search results. Collecting data and disseminating it is a fact of life. As a business, one should rapidly get used to the idea and seek constructive, professional ways to harness this power. Because, in this case knowledge is truly power, and if you or a company that you hire can get a handle on the niche you want to control and dominate to deliver your sales message or well-placed, online advertising, then you’re ready to watch your sales double, quadruple and more.
The true value an SEO expert on staff or a firm that understands the value of search engine optimization can transform your company. The concept is really very simple: put your company, product or service in the traffic or search results of people who are looking for your product or service. That’s it. Success on the Internet.
When you look at it that way, it doesn’t appear to be so hard to conquer. What you may fail to realize is that there are millions of companies and businesses out there that have already realized this fact and have gone on to seek their fortune in that realm. You will need an edge, something that most of your competitors lack.
This is where the basic principle of personalized search comes into play. You see, whether you’re a millionaire or Joe-Nobody surfing the Net, every time you query Google or any other search engine for information, that query data is stored in a database. It is then tabulated, and cross-tabulated with other things you and others have searched for. On a personal level, the search engines build a profile of your search habits over time. Like artificial intelligence, the search engines long to understand you, your interests and habits. As you search and surf, you will begin to see an eerie thing happen – more and more relevant search results will begin to pop up as you type.
Before you run screaming back into the dark ages, this is a good thing. For example, if you’ve shown an interest in fishing while our neighbor searches for musical instruments. When you search for “bass”, the search engine will begin to return fishing results, while your neighbor who searches for the exact same term, “bass” will get back musical instruments that are relevant to him – bass fiddles, bass drums, etc. This is personalized search results.
Now that you understand the concept, let’s talk about how you can use it in your business in order increase sales in your business. These personalized search results, you need to either learn or hire an SEO firm that is familiar with this major shift in how search engine optimization is going. Google is currently testing the waters with this form of personalization, and you need to be signed up with one of their services in order to get this kind of personalization. Theses services include: Adwords, Google Toolbar, Gmail and the like. Through these various forums, Google is learning about you and your preferences.
When you search through Google, it places a cookie which is a unique identifier on your machine. It doesn’t do anything, but identify you as a user of their service. No biggie, right? It will be just as easy for them to use this technology to collect user data in order to personalize your search. Right now, they’re waiting to see if there’s screaming in the streets from users who abhor any kind of data collection. More than likely, it will go by unnoticed by most. As a business, you need to be on the cutting edge of this new technology and have either an expert or a firm working towards utilizing this major upgrade in order to take you to the next level of the Internet.
Truly good search engine optimization firms are already preparing for this major shift, using things like “clean” machines for data collection and in how they report on Google’s ranking of data to their clients. Clean machines are one’s that have had no Google programs or cookies dropped on it. This will be a baseline machine with results for the client that are delivered as a snapshot of what they user would see if their machine was Google-less.
First, the good news. Account holders with the search engine giant will probably not be deluged with certain products based on their profiles, but their entire surfing and querying history will be reviewed and results will be skewed toward the user’s industry.
Then, there’s the bad news. Search engine optimization firms will have a rough time trying to demonstrate these results because the client will more than likely be using a Google program on personal machines, so the results won’t match with the SEO firm.
What all this means is that the company needs to establish a level of trust in the professional skills of the firm they choose. In return, the SEO firm needs to take the time to explain in detail how the new search engine results work showing how these results can appear totally different from machine to machine and why this happens. As well, the firm needs to have the technical skill to be able to delve into the client’s machine, look at the current cookies onboard and explain how this is affecting what results they’re getting.
When setting up a campaign, companies will have to take more into account when starting out. Having a good SEO firm onboard will simplify this latest level of complexity quite a bit. Being able to utilize personal search results and consumer profiles is just a step away, and it takes a high-level of skill to deal with it effectively.
April 1, 2008
Is Search Engine Optimization – SEO - Dead? By: Randy Zlobec
Try Search Engine Marketing – SEM - Instead
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization as a standalone methodology, is dead as a doornail. Trying to accomplish high search engine ranking using SEO alone is a losing proposition at best and web site suicide in most instances. You need to incorporate an entire SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaign which includes:
In the beginning, you could throw up any kind of page and get people to visit. Quality web pages were few and far between, and it was just astounding that you could get type on a page that others could view. Then came the keyword, the meta tag, the phrase, the optimization, software considered downright primitive in today’s world that would tell you your page was a cut above the pack. These days are long gone.
In order to get around the dead horse of SEO standalone, you need to be ready to add links, backlinks, and quality backlinks. You need to be able to do more than string three words together. Today’s readers are savvy. They want real information; don’t deliver junky, slapped together, non-researched splats of content and expect to maintain traffic and credibility. Today it is all about quality content, unique and different — that delivers a message that is both interesting and informative.
For basic optimization, you need to add things like blogging, dynamic updating, and social networking. Use the checklist below to smarten up your pages and make them more than SEO optimized. Knowing what makes them hum, what spiders love, will make your pages more than just web-ready. They will become traffic magnets.
Let’s Talk Keywords
If you remember nothing else, remember to put your keyword or keyword phrase in thePUT YOUR KEYWORD HERE . Many folks overlook this and just like that the spider glides on by—uninformed. If you are adding things like social bookmarking and blogging to your site and you forget this, you might as well be holding up a sign in a sandstorm.
Keywords in the URL do help. Remember if you are just redirecting a keyword URL to your web site to use a 301 Redirect which is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. See the sidebar on this page regarding redirect codes.
Keywords in your anchor text from another site. Called an inbound link, this is like getting a vote from another site. Be sure and have your keyword or keyword phrase as part of that vote.
Keywords in your tags. Yes, it is your headline. It’s important. It’s rated by search engines, and if your keyword is part of it, it’s rated higher. But be sure that it’s also part of your body text or you will probably upset the spiders. Never upset the spiders or you’ll be on page 11 million for your keyword. Keywords in the tags. Alt tags are what your page displays when the pictures can’t be found or someone browses your page with pictures turned off. Spiders also read the tags, so if you have your keyword in there then viola, more credit for your page.
Article Writing and Distribution
There are a number of article directories where you can distribute your articles with your resource box promoting your web site. You will want to write relevant, short quality articles that build curiosity for your web site. You do not want to write articles longer than 500–600 words for article directories.
Articles as Bait
On your web site, you will want to have longer, informative articles on a specific subject related to your web site’s topic. Called linkbait, these articles are designed to inform and educate your readership on relative topics. This is not what articles for article directories are all about. They are curiosity builders. You write 300–400 words on a topic to demonstrate your knowledge on that topic. You include a resource or author’s box back to your web site where you can present a long, in-depth version of your material.
One important thing to remember when writing articles for directories. Each must be different and unique from each other, and each one must be different than the one on your web site. If you duplicate articles for the various article directories and they all have inbound links to the same content on your main web site, you will kill your page rank and credibility. If you can remember that article directories get you quickly indexed and offer a curiosity booster that acts as a portal to your main web site, then you’ll write accordingly.
Through these directories, you’ll receive a ton of backlinks as other web sites use your content on their web site. However, none of it will match what’s on your own web site, so it won’t be considered duplicate content, just inbound links.
Press Releases Are An Overlooked, Great Process
If you can write news copy, you can write a decent press release which will get your web site a ton of exposure. You will want to put out a press release for the following reasons:
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Using pay-per-click advertising is another way to get almost instant traffic to your web site. Utilizing pay-per-click giants like Google and Yahoo, you can pay for visitors to your web site. You list small, contextually-based advertising which is published across their network of web sites, and interested people click on your advertising and arrive at your site. This is one of the quickest ways to get traffic to arrive, but it can be costly to get started. Pay-Per-Click lets you advertise to the whole of the online community.
There are also text link advertising, classified advertising, and pay-per-post advertising where you can get other bloggers to blog for money about your product or service on your web site. It is a variation of PPC in that bloggers will write and review your site or service for a small fee and list you for a set period of time on their web site. It adds content to their site and gives you more than just a link back to your site.
Social Networking and Social News Sites
Web 2.0 and social networking are the next fastest ways to get traffic rolling into your site. To get the ball rolling and to give you some ideas on where to start, let’s look at the basics of social news networking. We want to separate this from social bookmarking which is for personal use. Social news networking is for when you want to advertising your business, home business, or professional site. It’s about providing news to the world about who and what you are, the benefits you offer, and why they should stop by.
Some of the better news sites where you can post your short articles include: Netscape, Newsvine, StumbleUpon, Digg and OnlyWire to name a few. These sites are news-hungry, just waiting for information about your web site. Whatever your site is about will be quickly and effectively disseminated by posting on these web sites.
Considered the second generation in online marketing, social networking is all about building communities of like minded individuals who are looking for certain things. You web site is taken into a group, and depending on your service or product, people arrive at your web site because of the tags and text you provide to the online community. There are as many social news and networking sites as there are interests, but the main ones to start with are listed but by no means complete. HBM
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization as a standalone methodology, is dead as a doornail. Trying to accomplish high search engine ranking using SEO alone is a losing proposition at best and web site suicide in most instances. You need to incorporate an entire SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaign which includes:
- Link Building
- Article Writing & Distribution
- Press Release Writing & Distribution
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Social Networking
- Blogging
In the beginning, you could throw up any kind of page and get people to visit. Quality web pages were few and far between, and it was just astounding that you could get type on a page that others could view. Then came the keyword, the meta tag, the phrase, the optimization, software considered downright primitive in today’s world that would tell you your page was a cut above the pack. These days are long gone.
In order to get around the dead horse of SEO standalone, you need to be ready to add links, backlinks, and quality backlinks. You need to be able to do more than string three words together. Today’s readers are savvy. They want real information; don’t deliver junky, slapped together, non-researched splats of content and expect to maintain traffic and credibility. Today it is all about quality content, unique and different — that delivers a message that is both interesting and informative.
For basic optimization, you need to add things like blogging, dynamic updating, and social networking. Use the checklist below to smarten up your pages and make them more than SEO optimized. Knowing what makes them hum, what spiders love, will make your pages more than just web-ready. They will become traffic magnets.
Let’s Talk Keywords
If you remember nothing else, remember to put your keyword or keyword phrase in the
Keywords in the URL do help. Remember if you are just redirecting a keyword URL to your web site to use a 301 Redirect which is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. See the sidebar on this page regarding redirect codes.
Keywords in your anchor text from another site. Called an inbound link, this is like getting a vote from another site. Be sure and have your keyword or keyword phrase as part of that vote.
Keywords in your tags. Yes, it is your headline. It’s important. It’s rated by search engines, and if your keyword is part of it, it’s rated higher. But be sure that it’s also part of your body text or you will probably upset the spiders. Never upset the spiders or you’ll be on page 11 million for your keyword. Keywords in the
There are a number of article directories where you can distribute your articles with your resource box promoting your web site. You will want to write relevant, short quality articles that build curiosity for your web site. You do not want to write articles longer than 500–600 words for article directories.
Articles as Bait
On your web site, you will want to have longer, informative articles on a specific subject related to your web site’s topic. Called linkbait, these articles are designed to inform and educate your readership on relative topics. This is not what articles for article directories are all about. They are curiosity builders. You write 300–400 words on a topic to demonstrate your knowledge on that topic. You include a resource or author’s box back to your web site where you can present a long, in-depth version of your material.
One important thing to remember when writing articles for directories. Each must be different and unique from each other, and each one must be different than the one on your web site. If you duplicate articles for the various article directories and they all have inbound links to the same content on your main web site, you will kill your page rank and credibility. If you can remember that article directories get you quickly indexed and offer a curiosity booster that acts as a portal to your main web site, then you’ll write accordingly.
Through these directories, you’ll receive a ton of backlinks as other web sites use your content on their web site. However, none of it will match what’s on your own web site, so it won’t be considered duplicate content, just inbound links.
Press Releases Are An Overlooked, Great Process
If you can write news copy, you can write a decent press release which will get your web site a ton of exposure. You will want to put out a press release for the following reasons:
To announce your new web site and what it’s all aboutUsing press releases in this fashion will always guarantee a steady stream of visitors in that a well-written press release will usually be picked up by other sites and be rewritten and added to their new repository which increases the number of incoming links you’ll receive.
To highlight new products and services that you add to your web site
To review various themed parts of your web site
To announce expansion of your web site
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Using pay-per-click advertising is another way to get almost instant traffic to your web site. Utilizing pay-per-click giants like Google and Yahoo, you can pay for visitors to your web site. You list small, contextually-based advertising which is published across their network of web sites, and interested people click on your advertising and arrive at your site. This is one of the quickest ways to get traffic to arrive, but it can be costly to get started. Pay-Per-Click lets you advertise to the whole of the online community.
There are also text link advertising, classified advertising, and pay-per-post advertising where you can get other bloggers to blog for money about your product or service on your web site. It is a variation of PPC in that bloggers will write and review your site or service for a small fee and list you for a set period of time on their web site. It adds content to their site and gives you more than just a link back to your site.
Social Networking and Social News Sites
Web 2.0 and social networking are the next fastest ways to get traffic rolling into your site. To get the ball rolling and to give you some ideas on where to start, let’s look at the basics of social news networking. We want to separate this from social bookmarking which is for personal use. Social news networking is for when you want to advertising your business, home business, or professional site. It’s about providing news to the world about who and what you are, the benefits you offer, and why they should stop by.
Some of the better news sites where you can post your short articles include: Netscape, Newsvine, StumbleUpon, Digg and OnlyWire to name a few. These sites are news-hungry, just waiting for information about your web site. Whatever your site is about will be quickly and effectively disseminated by posting on these web sites.
Considered the second generation in online marketing, social networking is all about building communities of like minded individuals who are looking for certain things. You web site is taken into a group, and depending on your service or product, people arrive at your web site because of the tags and text you provide to the online community. There are as many social news and networking sites as there are interests, but the main ones to start with are listed but by no means complete. HBM
- Previously published in the April 2008 issue of HOME BUSINESS® Magazine, an international publication for the growing and dynamic home-based market.
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Article Link: http://www.homebusinessmag.com/ecommerce/search-engine-optimization/search-engine-optimization-%E2%80%93-seo-dead
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