Wednesday, December 24, 2008

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed correctly to begin with, follow-on SEO efforts will have limited results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about productive SEO results:

- Create an attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services.

- Design a website that has a call-to-action in the form of a purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your visitor.

- Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services with the many follow-on strategies that drive traffic to your website.

- Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services based on a strong reputation.

- Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by evolving as your market demands.

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating long-term popularity on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.

These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

- Good web design will complement and enhance the company image and offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done well.

- Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.

- Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.

- Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly depends on how the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to the website.

- Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to offer.

- Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets, then tie each website back to the others by linking.

- Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the search engines.

Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content. But how that content is presented is what makes the difference. 

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How important are back links?

When setting up your website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google there are several factors you need to look at in order to obtain a high rank on their search engine. Of course your content and meta tags must be inline with positive density percentages and reciprocal links. Google then takes your website and performs a mathematic equation and places a numeric value on your website depending on one of the most important features, reciprocal or back links.

A back link and reciprocal link are identical. They both say the same thing to the Google engine, that your site should be ranked higher in the order because other people find value in what your website has to offer, thus they provide a link to your site. In turn, you keep a closed loop by reciprocating the favor to the other website by extending the same courtesy of a back link. Thus creating a solid network connection. Google likes to see interconnectivity and will reward your website well for planning it this way.

There are drawbacks to the equation. As things change a website that you are affiliated with may drop a hyperlink or a page may get accidentally deleted. When the Google robot goes through your website and finds a dead link it notes that you aren’t keeping good care of your website and punishes your web rank by reducing its point value. If you wish to know what your sites current point value is download The Google Toolbar and search for your website www.yourwebsitename.com in the box and perform a Google web search. Upon reading the full URL, Google will go directly to your site first thus pulling up your home page. There on the toolbar will be a page rank for your website between 1 and 10. 1 being a less visited and noted website and 10 a site that screams traffic 24/7.

Some of the individuals you share reciprocal links with may in fact scan all their links for continuity, should they receive a bounce back for a broken link on your website you can be assured you will receive an email from them. Keeping your website in balance with other sites you share links with will keep the Google engine happy. If you go off and add a company that is not Google friendly, meaning they have no back links you may also lose points. 

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Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Get Listed In Google By Making An XML SiteMap and Without Spending A Time

If you have been unsuccessfully trying to get listed in Google or just hitting roadblocks when trying to get more of your pages listed in Google, then you need to read this short article. I am about to reveal a simple SEO secret that can save you a lot of time, money and effort.

Google has a preferred search submission format that it actually asks webmasters to use, It's called a Google SiteMap.

Admittedly, creating and using XML is no easy task for anyone who is non-technical or inexperienced with web coding, however there is a site or two on the web that can actually help you create an XML sitemap and then submit it to Google so that this venerable search engine can crawl your previously unknown web site and get you listed.

Of course there are no guarantees that your site will get high ranks or that it will meet Google's guidelines for inclusion, so be sure to make sure that your site is properly optimized and meets their guidelines before using these tools.

Before I reveal these tools and show you where to go to find out how to use them, let's take a look at the basics.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a special document formatted created to allow communication between applications and also between organizations. XML is a practical system that structurally defines the format and composition of intricate documents and data such as invoices, news feeds, inventory reports, catalog listings and other complex documents. A seasoned programmer who understands XML can easily create XML applications that know how to pull data from XML sources and then format it for presentation to end users.

In the case of Google, this same XML data format can be used to define your site's pages and their position in relation to each other. So for example, your "about_us.html" page is usually connected only one click away from your "index.html" page. When used in this manner to define pages and their positions we are creating what is commonly known as a sitemap.

Google says in the own words, "Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. It's a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages."

So in essence, Google is asking us to help them index the web by using this simple technique that will no doubt become a major help to struggling webmasters everywhere.

Google, by the way, will accept simple text file based sitemaps. Please consult their site for more information.

How to get your sitemap indexed.

Once your sitemap has been created and uploaded to the main directory of your web site, simply use this URL to submit it:

www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Just replace the parameter, "sitemap_url" with the actual URL of your sitemap. Example:


www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.mywebsiteabc.com/
sitemap.xml

You can also open a Google account before submitting to make sure that you can actually track your submission to check your sitemap status.

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

I promised to reveal the tools used to facilitate the creation of XML sitemaps and here they are...

The Tools Revealed:

SiteMapspal:

Use this Google recommended online tool to generate a Google friendly xml sitemap that you can simple cut/paste and then upload to your site. Simply provide your site URL and select a few optional settings and with one-click ease you will have a sitemap, ready to go.

http://www.sitemapspal.com/



Google SiteMap Generator:

Provided by Google themselves, this is not for the faint of heart, it requires some knowledge of working with Python scripts (a web coding format) and will requires installation on your site.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html



SiteMap Validator:

Use this Google recommended tool to validate your sitemap for accuracy.

http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/submit-validate-sitemap/  

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Beginners Guide To Search Engine Optimization

Sections in this guide:

A: What is SEO? 
o Why does my company need SEO? 
o Why do the search engines need SEO? 
o How much of this article do I need to read? 
B: How Search Engines Operate 
o Speed Bumps and Walls 
o Measuring Popularity and Relevance 
o Information Search Engines Can Trust 
o The Anatomy of a HyperLink 
o Keywords & Queries 
o Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff 
o Paid Placement and Secondary Sources in the Results 
C: How to Conduct Keyword Research 
o Wordtracker & Overture 
o Targeting the Right Terms 
o The "Long Tail" of Search 
o Sample Keyword Research Chart 
D: Critical Components of Optimizing a Site 
o Accessibility 
o URLs, Titles & Meta Data 
o Search Friendly Text 
o Information Architecture 
o Canonical Issues & Duplicate Content 
E: Building a Traffic-Worthy Site 
o Usability 
o Professional Design 
o Authoring High Quality Content 
o Link Bait 
F: Growing a Site's Popularity 
o Community Building 
o Press Releases and Public Relations 
o Link Building Based on Competitive Analysis 
o Building Personality & Reputation 
o Highly Competitive Terms & Phrases 
G: Conclusion: Crafting an SEO Strategy 
o Quality vs. Quantity 
o Measuring Success: Website & Ranking Metrics to Watch 
o Working with a Pro vs. Do-It-Yourself SEO 
o Where to Get Questions Answered 
H: Links to More Information & Resources