Having a website is like advertising your business in the yellow pages of yesteryears. A top Google ranking website lets you reach potential customers and pre-sells your products and services. What is the price of not having a website in today's business context? A lot!
By Azmi Adnan
For every business entity that exists today, there is a website that goes along with it. Having a website is like advertising your business in the yellow pages of yesteryears. A top Google ranking website lets you reach potential customers and pre-sells your products and services. What is the price of not having a website in today’s business context? Seriously, a lot. It is something that no business can do without.
When previously we visit a travel agent to purchase our plane tickets, today we do it at a click of a mouse on our home computer from service providers such as priceline.com and at a cheaper price too. In some cases, we can even choose our preferred seats and our in-flight meals. We used to book our hotel rooms from travel agents too but now when can do it directly from the hotel website or from discount wholesalers such as hotel.com. The business gameplan has changed. Today, business is conducted at the speed of thought.
Unless you are a big entity that everyone knows about such as American Airlines, Citibank, or Amazon, letting your customers find you in the crowded world wide web can be complicated. Firstly, you need to understand the surfing habits of people looking for information. Surfers hardly go beyond the first page of a search engine and even if they do click on your link to view you site, you generally have about 7 seconds to engage them before they leave. Unless you are very good at copywriting and designing web pages, I suggest you outsource this task to people who are experts in this field, and there are plenty of them around.
Besides the importance of having a top Google ranking or having a top 3 positions in the generic search result of the search engines, there are also other ways of letting your customers reach you. If you own a specialist store for wines for example, you can distribute flyers to your customers and let them know where you can be found in cyberspace. You can even collect email addresses of your customers and start sending ezines and updates on your products and services to them. The idea is not to sell to everyone, but to a select group of people who has shown and interest in your business and keep selling to them. The fact that your customers visited your store pre-qualifies them.
This article is to establish that if you need to survive in today’s business environment, a website is an essential instrument to reach to your customers. If your are building a new customer base based on your presence in cyberspace, than having a top Google ranking or a first page ranking in the other search engines is your priority task. However, you can also take advantage of your current customers who visit your store and build a relation with them through newsletters with a link to your site. In any case, in this digital age, you need to reach out to your customers and offer greater convenience and value through the world wide web.
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Be #1 On MSN Bing By Christmas. Really!
MSN Bing is probably the most profitable search engine you can be found on. Unlike Google, it attracts many more adults eager to buy than kids just playing around. And very unlike Google, you can get to number one on MSN Bing using the simple method revealed in this article.
By Michael Small
MSN’s new counterpart Bing is rewriting search engine history. Touted by Microsoft as the first ever “decision engine” it’s picking up steam like Yahoo in its heyday and is in place to give Google a serious run for its money.
Speaking of “serious”; it’s important to mention that MSN and now Bing are the search engine of choice for most credit card carrying adults. In fact, MSN Bing is the default search engine on every new Windows PC sold. That’s Big! A lot of people go to Google for playing around but stick to Bing when they mean business. And that’s great for you!
I recently obtained ten (out of 10!) top five placements on MSN Bing using a simple formula I can share right now. It took me only a few hours to do all the work, including the domain purchase and setting up hosting. Here is that magic formula:
* Focus on just one keyword for the site. Make it your most important.
* Use the exact keyword phrase as your domain name and be sure it ends in .com, .net, or .org. It is fine to use dashes between each or any combination of words in the domain name. They are treated as spaces by the search engine and are typically much easier to get than domains without dashes.
* Pay for two or more years when you register the domain. They appear to be using Google’s trick of checking registration dates and giving preference to those registered for more than one year.
* Post just one or two pages. If you need more than a home page, add a contact page or something else light on text. Note: You can use your site as a landing page and create links to all of your main site’s pages.
* Keep your home page text between 250 and 400 words. If you need to say more, add images that contain the text you want displayed.
* Put your keywords in the headings but do not use “head tags” or “strong tags.” Just make the text big and bold using the “bold tag.”
* Use your keyword phrase up to two times per one hundred words of text, but do not go over five full mentions for the entire page of text (plus up to two more for headings.)
* Mention your full keyword phrase once toward the beginning of the first paragraph and again within the first one third of the page text. Then use it once near the end of the page text. The other mentions can go anywhere in between.
* If you decide to go the software route to get faster results (still using these tips), stick with one that works well for MSN Bing. Many do not. Note: I developed the method above by using the tool I found at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com.
Results: Here’s one example… I took one local client’s main keyword phrase of “richmond auto repair”, separated each word with a dash and registered the dotcom version. Within two weeks it became number one on MSN Bing for that keyword phrase and has stayed there as a gateway to the main site. It’s been four months now and I’ve done this for dozens of keywords, with my last experiment yielding 10 for 10 using just the tips listed here.
You can do it too.
Mike Small is the SEO Specialist for Marketing Considerations, LLC. Based in Richmond Virginia, Marketing Considerations helps clients from all over the US, Japan, Germany and the UK with their search engine optimization needs.
By Michael Small
MSN’s new counterpart Bing is rewriting search engine history. Touted by Microsoft as the first ever “decision engine” it’s picking up steam like Yahoo in its heyday and is in place to give Google a serious run for its money.
Speaking of “serious”; it’s important to mention that MSN and now Bing are the search engine of choice for most credit card carrying adults. In fact, MSN Bing is the default search engine on every new Windows PC sold. That’s Big! A lot of people go to Google for playing around but stick to Bing when they mean business. And that’s great for you!
I recently obtained ten (out of 10!) top five placements on MSN Bing using a simple formula I can share right now. It took me only a few hours to do all the work, including the domain purchase and setting up hosting. Here is that magic formula:
* Focus on just one keyword for the site. Make it your most important.
* Use the exact keyword phrase as your domain name and be sure it ends in .com, .net, or .org. It is fine to use dashes between each or any combination of words in the domain name. They are treated as spaces by the search engine and are typically much easier to get than domains without dashes.
* Pay for two or more years when you register the domain. They appear to be using Google’s trick of checking registration dates and giving preference to those registered for more than one year.
* Post just one or two pages. If you need more than a home page, add a contact page or something else light on text. Note: You can use your site as a landing page and create links to all of your main site’s pages.
* Keep your home page text between 250 and 400 words. If you need to say more, add images that contain the text you want displayed.
* Put your keywords in the headings but do not use “head tags” or “strong tags.” Just make the text big and bold using the “bold tag.”
* Use your keyword phrase up to two times per one hundred words of text, but do not go over five full mentions for the entire page of text (plus up to two more for headings.)
* Mention your full keyword phrase once toward the beginning of the first paragraph and again within the first one third of the page text. Then use it once near the end of the page text. The other mentions can go anywhere in between.
* If you decide to go the software route to get faster results (still using these tips), stick with one that works well for MSN Bing. Many do not. Note: I developed the method above by using the tool I found at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com.
Results: Here’s one example… I took one local client’s main keyword phrase of “richmond auto repair”, separated each word with a dash and registered the dotcom version. Within two weeks it became number one on MSN Bing for that keyword phrase and has stayed there as a gateway to the main site. It’s been four months now and I’ve done this for dozens of keywords, with my last experiment yielding 10 for 10 using just the tips listed here.
You can do it too.
Mike Small is the SEO Specialist for Marketing Considerations, LLC. Based in Richmond Virginia, Marketing Considerations helps clients from all over the US, Japan, Germany and the UK with their search engine optimization needs.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Make Your Website First On Google's Search Page
The top spot on Google is the holy grail for website owners. If you can get the top spot on Google, you have a good chance of being found. How can you get there? Read on to find out.
By Anton Pearce
Have you been vying for the number one spot on Google’s search page? Google has many different ways of determining how a website gets there. Here are a few tips that can help you optimize your website for Google.
Every website is battling for the top spot in Google’s search results page, and to do that you have to optimize your website for Google. Optimization requires continually improving your site’s content. Even though Yahoo and Bing simply search the tag structures in HTML, Google uses a trickier, and somewhat clandestine, method to determine top spot.
Google looks for websites that continually provide fresh and relevant content. Since Google has such strict guidelines for top spot, it requires web page owners to continually work on keeping their page’s content fresh and relevant to hold a top spot in the list.
Keywords and Phrases
Google looks for phrases and keywords as it is assessing a site. It evaluates a site’s content, and looks for phrases that match a particular search term. If say, a visitor is looking for ‘boat repair’ Google will display pages where that keyword shows up several of times in the body of the page. So when you are optimizing your web page, you should concentrate on phrases rather than single words. Now that you know Google is looking for a particular phrase you do not want to go crazy with that phrase on a page either, because this is know as keyword stuffing. Be careful with keyword phrases—if Google sees too many of them, they will lower your page in the search engine rankings.
The Title Tag
The title tag is important and is unique to each page in a website. The tag can be found on the browser’s title bar. It is also used by Googlebot to see what the page contents are going to be. Google then looks at the page contents and evaluates if the two match, and this helps determine page relevance. Since Google looks at each page in a domain, many sites dynamically generate page titles with an introduction text appended to the company name.
Anchor Text
When you add link tags to your page, this is anchor text. Take care to be precise in your anchor test by using relevant phrases for prominent links on your page. Google is looking for specific link information, so the more specific that you can be the better. If you focus on your site’s keyword terms and make sure that these are always in line with your content, you will make Google’s assessment of your site easy. Google is generous with its link limits saying that no more than 100 links should ever appear on a web page.
Header Tags
Header tags are HTML page elements coded “”, and they provide a bold heading on the page. The headers tell Google what the purpose of the page is, and the title tag tells it the purpose of the website. You should have a header tag on each page.
Quality Content
The last thing that Google is looking for is unique content. Google’s customers are your website visitors, and when Google returns a search list, they want their customers to be happy. So you are helping Google as it is helping your. By finding good, fresh content on your web page along with the keyword phrase that their customer is looking for, Google is happy to place your site at the top of the list and return it to the screen. So if you have bad content - either plagiarized, badly written or irrelevant content - Google is not interested in you. If your site offends the Google guidelines frequently enough, it will eventually blacklist your domain and not even bother to evaluate it.
Optimize Your Website for Google and Make it Readable
By complying with the guidelines that Google has set out for page ranking, you can set your page up to show up at the top of the search list. By continually adding new content, Google will mark your page as a good one to return to its customer. However, you must always make sure that you site is aesthetically pleasing and readable by a human, because the point of why you optimize your website for Google, is to attract new visitors to your page to increase your company’s market share.
Anton Pearce specializes in helping you to use internet marketing to get all the clients you need for your practice. Sign up for his highly acclaimed and miraculously free ezine and find out how to turn your website into an automated new client or patient referral generating machine.
By Anton Pearce
Have you been vying for the number one spot on Google’s search page? Google has many different ways of determining how a website gets there. Here are a few tips that can help you optimize your website for Google.
Every website is battling for the top spot in Google’s search results page, and to do that you have to optimize your website for Google. Optimization requires continually improving your site’s content. Even though Yahoo and Bing simply search the tag structures in HTML, Google uses a trickier, and somewhat clandestine, method to determine top spot.
Google looks for websites that continually provide fresh and relevant content. Since Google has such strict guidelines for top spot, it requires web page owners to continually work on keeping their page’s content fresh and relevant to hold a top spot in the list.
Keywords and Phrases
Google looks for phrases and keywords as it is assessing a site. It evaluates a site’s content, and looks for phrases that match a particular search term. If say, a visitor is looking for ‘boat repair’ Google will display pages where that keyword shows up several of times in the body of the page. So when you are optimizing your web page, you should concentrate on phrases rather than single words. Now that you know Google is looking for a particular phrase you do not want to go crazy with that phrase on a page either, because this is know as keyword stuffing. Be careful with keyword phrases—if Google sees too many of them, they will lower your page in the search engine rankings.
The Title Tag
The title tag is important and is unique to each page in a website. The tag can be found on the browser’s title bar. It is also used by Googlebot to see what the page contents are going to be. Google then looks at the page contents and evaluates if the two match, and this helps determine page relevance. Since Google looks at each page in a domain, many sites dynamically generate page titles with an introduction text appended to the company name.
Anchor Text
When you add link tags to your page, this is anchor text. Take care to be precise in your anchor test by using relevant phrases for prominent links on your page. Google is looking for specific link information, so the more specific that you can be the better. If you focus on your site’s keyword terms and make sure that these are always in line with your content, you will make Google’s assessment of your site easy. Google is generous with its link limits saying that no more than 100 links should ever appear on a web page.
Header Tags
Header tags are HTML page elements coded “”, and they provide a bold heading on the page. The headers tell Google what the purpose of the page is, and the title tag tells it the purpose of the website. You should have a header tag on each page.
Quality Content
The last thing that Google is looking for is unique content. Google’s customers are your website visitors, and when Google returns a search list, they want their customers to be happy. So you are helping Google as it is helping your. By finding good, fresh content on your web page along with the keyword phrase that their customer is looking for, Google is happy to place your site at the top of the list and return it to the screen. So if you have bad content - either plagiarized, badly written or irrelevant content - Google is not interested in you. If your site offends the Google guidelines frequently enough, it will eventually blacklist your domain and not even bother to evaluate it.
Optimize Your Website for Google and Make it Readable
By complying with the guidelines that Google has set out for page ranking, you can set your page up to show up at the top of the search list. By continually adding new content, Google will mark your page as a good one to return to its customer. However, you must always make sure that you site is aesthetically pleasing and readable by a human, because the point of why you optimize your website for Google, is to attract new visitors to your page to increase your company’s market share.
Anton Pearce specializes in helping you to use internet marketing to get all the clients you need for your practice. Sign up for his highly acclaimed and miraculously free ezine and find out how to turn your website into an automated new client or patient referral generating machine.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Increase Your Startup's Online Visibility
By Scott Gerber, Young Entrepreneur
The web is the great equalizer in business. Resources aside, every day, billion-dollar businesses and startups compete on an even playing field for internet exposure. To the victor go the spoils: top rankings on major search engines that can skyrocket a business’s revenue into the stratosphere.
The key to a successful search engine optimization campaign is to create a unique language that captures the attention of consumers and becomes synonymous with your brand name. Owning a brand language means that every time prospective customers type your keywords and phrases into a search engine, your site--as well as other websites and media that support your website and its offerings--is the first result they see.
Begin by identifying keywords and phrases that are highly relevant to your product or service. Entrepreneur offers a keyword search tool, and there are other sites such as Network Solutions or Google AdWords to assist you in narrowing down your verbiage. In the early stages of your SEO campaign, your brand language should consist of no more than two or three keywords or phrases. Likewise, it is important to make certain your brand language is uniquely yours so you can "own" it. As an example, an environmentally friendly carwash business may never be able to own the words "car wash" due to the sheer number of car washes in the world, but it may be able to own the phrase "eco-friendly car wash."
Once you've selected your main keywords and phrases, incorporate your brand language into your company tagline, a one-sentence company description and one-paragraph company bio. Along with your individual keywords and phrases, this content will serve as the primary media you will utilize for your SEO campaign.
After you have completed your brand language content, it’s time to distribute your keywords and phrases to specific internet channels. This tactic will increase the number of links driving traffic back to your site and increase the amount of real estate that you control on the web--effectively building your site’s visibility on search engines. Here are five ways to use your brand language to dramatically improve the efficacy of your search engine optimization efforts.
Optimize your website
Making your website search engine friendly is vital to improving your online visibility. Search engine optimization entails placing your brand language in specific areas on your site. For starters, you’ll need a website header title no more than 70-80 characters and a site description no more than 200 characters. Both the title and the description need to include all of your brand language. Additionally, be sure each of your keywords and phrases is included in your site’s meta tags and body text, but be careful not to overuse them. Only use each keyword once in your title, description and meta tags; twice in the site’s main body text is sufficient. Overuse may cause some search engines to define your site as spam, resulting in a lowered site or page ranking. You may also want to consider using online services such as Web.com or hiring a reputable SEO firm or consultant to help improve SEO efficacy. Should you decide to use a firm or consultant, avoid anyone who "guarantees" he can get your site to the No. 1 position on Google’s organic search. He'll probably also have a bridge to sell you.
Distribute optimized press releases
Distributing and posting press releases online monthly will create a large number of link-backs to your site, which steadily increases your visibility and site ranking. When composing your press releases, include your keywords and phrases once or--at most--twice within the body text of the release. Once you lock your copy, hyperlink each of your keywords and phrases to link back to your site. In some cases, press release distribution services, such as PR Web, will have you create hyperlinks using their proprietary software. For all other cases, click here to see how to write a simple hyperlink html code. To avoid your releases being read as spam by search engines, only hyperlink one keyword or phrase per 100 characters. Once your release is completed, use wire services such as PR Web and Business Wire to distribute your release to hundreds of sites and journalists. There are also a plethora of free posting sites you can use to increase exposure.
Create social media channels
Social media sites offer your brand the chance to control hundreds of pages of prime real estate on the internet; many of which have high site rankings and lend credibility to your site in the eyes of search engines. Populate your social media profiles with your company tagline, bio and website URL. Tag all image, video and media files that you upload to these sites with your keywords and phrases. Include elements of your brand language in status updates and posts, and utilize free services such as Ping.fm to syndicate your content.
Commenting on blogs and forums
Commenting and blogging on relevant industry threads, websites and forums is another way to create valuable link-backs to your site. Make a list of the top blogs and online sites in your industry. In some instances, you may be able to offer your services as a guest blogger, which would allow you to include your company credentials and brand language in guest posts. For all other sites on your list, comment and respond regularly to posts made by site content providers with relevant advice that incorporates your brand language and website URL. Avoid self-promotion or spam messaging. Whenever you register a user account, use one of your keywords or phrases as your username and include your website URL. In many cases, usernames become hyperlinks when your comments go live.
Produce a viral-ready newsletter
Newsletters that offer valuable content have the ability to exponentially increase a site’s exposure in search engines. Every time you create a newsletter, share it on various social-bookmarking sites to increase exposure. Enable users to easily share the content as well by integrating social media tools such as ShareThis and Tweetmeme or social-bookmarking tools such as Digg and Delicious into your newsletter template. Since social-bookmarking sites and other social media sharing tools will pull the title of your newsletter onto their sites, make sure to always include your brand language in the newsletter’s title.
The web is the great equalizer in business. Resources aside, every day, billion-dollar businesses and startups compete on an even playing field for internet exposure. To the victor go the spoils: top rankings on major search engines that can skyrocket a business’s revenue into the stratosphere.
The key to a successful search engine optimization campaign is to create a unique language that captures the attention of consumers and becomes synonymous with your brand name. Owning a brand language means that every time prospective customers type your keywords and phrases into a search engine, your site--as well as other websites and media that support your website and its offerings--is the first result they see.
Begin by identifying keywords and phrases that are highly relevant to your product or service. Entrepreneur offers a keyword search tool, and there are other sites such as Network Solutions or Google AdWords to assist you in narrowing down your verbiage. In the early stages of your SEO campaign, your brand language should consist of no more than two or three keywords or phrases. Likewise, it is important to make certain your brand language is uniquely yours so you can "own" it. As an example, an environmentally friendly carwash business may never be able to own the words "car wash" due to the sheer number of car washes in the world, but it may be able to own the phrase "eco-friendly car wash."
Once you've selected your main keywords and phrases, incorporate your brand language into your company tagline, a one-sentence company description and one-paragraph company bio. Along with your individual keywords and phrases, this content will serve as the primary media you will utilize for your SEO campaign.
After you have completed your brand language content, it’s time to distribute your keywords and phrases to specific internet channels. This tactic will increase the number of links driving traffic back to your site and increase the amount of real estate that you control on the web--effectively building your site’s visibility on search engines. Here are five ways to use your brand language to dramatically improve the efficacy of your search engine optimization efforts.
Optimize your website
Making your website search engine friendly is vital to improving your online visibility. Search engine optimization entails placing your brand language in specific areas on your site. For starters, you’ll need a website header title no more than 70-80 characters and a site description no more than 200 characters. Both the title and the description need to include all of your brand language. Additionally, be sure each of your keywords and phrases is included in your site’s meta tags and body text, but be careful not to overuse them. Only use each keyword once in your title, description and meta tags; twice in the site’s main body text is sufficient. Overuse may cause some search engines to define your site as spam, resulting in a lowered site or page ranking. You may also want to consider using online services such as Web.com or hiring a reputable SEO firm or consultant to help improve SEO efficacy. Should you decide to use a firm or consultant, avoid anyone who "guarantees" he can get your site to the No. 1 position on Google’s organic search. He'll probably also have a bridge to sell you.
Distribute optimized press releases
Distributing and posting press releases online monthly will create a large number of link-backs to your site, which steadily increases your visibility and site ranking. When composing your press releases, include your keywords and phrases once or--at most--twice within the body text of the release. Once you lock your copy, hyperlink each of your keywords and phrases to link back to your site. In some cases, press release distribution services, such as PR Web, will have you create hyperlinks using their proprietary software. For all other cases, click here to see how to write a simple hyperlink html code. To avoid your releases being read as spam by search engines, only hyperlink one keyword or phrase per 100 characters. Once your release is completed, use wire services such as PR Web and Business Wire to distribute your release to hundreds of sites and journalists. There are also a plethora of free posting sites you can use to increase exposure.
Create social media channels
Social media sites offer your brand the chance to control hundreds of pages of prime real estate on the internet; many of which have high site rankings and lend credibility to your site in the eyes of search engines. Populate your social media profiles with your company tagline, bio and website URL. Tag all image, video and media files that you upload to these sites with your keywords and phrases. Include elements of your brand language in status updates and posts, and utilize free services such as Ping.fm to syndicate your content.
Commenting on blogs and forums
Commenting and blogging on relevant industry threads, websites and forums is another way to create valuable link-backs to your site. Make a list of the top blogs and online sites in your industry. In some instances, you may be able to offer your services as a guest blogger, which would allow you to include your company credentials and brand language in guest posts. For all other sites on your list, comment and respond regularly to posts made by site content providers with relevant advice that incorporates your brand language and website URL. Avoid self-promotion or spam messaging. Whenever you register a user account, use one of your keywords or phrases as your username and include your website URL. In many cases, usernames become hyperlinks when your comments go live.
Produce a viral-ready newsletter
Newsletters that offer valuable content have the ability to exponentially increase a site’s exposure in search engines. Every time you create a newsletter, share it on various social-bookmarking sites to increase exposure. Enable users to easily share the content as well by integrating social media tools such as ShareThis and Tweetmeme or social-bookmarking tools such as Digg and Delicious into your newsletter template. Since social-bookmarking sites and other social media sharing tools will pull the title of your newsletter onto their sites, make sure to always include your brand language in the newsletter’s title.
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