Search Engine Optimization Home Page

Consider Page Load Speed

2007-10-13T00:08:00.000-07:00

ccording to WebsiteOptimization, 78.45% of all home internet users in the US were on broadband connections as of the end of 2006. However, this still leaves 21.55% of internet users on narrowband connections at 56K and lower. This means that considering the page load speed of your landing page should be of importance to you. Otherwise, many of the users with slower connections will naturally have a higher likelihood of abandoning your site. What are some things that you can do to make your landing page load faster?

1. As mentioned in my previous article Keep Users Engaged, don’t drown your page with too many graphical elements. Not only will this intimidate the user, but will lengthen your landing page load times and cause a higher rate of abandonment.

2. Avoid using too many animations. Animations take up a huge amount of space since they are comprised of multiple frames of static images. A blinking arrow animation with 8 frames can take up to 30-40K.

3. Compress your images as much as possible. I don’t mean that you should compress them to the point where they appear grainy like the EGA graphics from Space Quest, but don’t use the best image quality possible either. Determine the appropriate compression level where the quality reduction is barely noticeable.

4. Minimize dependencies on other pages. If you are calling images or code from other servers (such as tracking pixels), make sure that you thoroughly test connection reliability. Performance issues from remote servers can wreak havoc on your page load speeds by creating severe bottlenecks.

There are many other ways to speed up your webpage, but the important idea that I wanted to convey in this article was the principle itself. Should you want to determine the load speed of your landing page on different connection types, you can use the Web Page Analyzer provided by WebsiteOptimization.

Source on this link: http://www.cdfnetworks.com/landing-page-or-redirect-that-is-the-question/

Pay Per Click Success Secrets - 9 Alternative Great Tips to Improve Your Conversion Rate

2007-10-13T00:06:00.000-07:00

Posted in Landing Pages, General, General Affiliate by Chad on July 26, 2007

Should I use a landing page or a redirect?

It’s a question often asked on forums for new affiliates. But it is still a question that even the most experienced affiliate struggles with. On one hand, going direct to the offer eliminates the extra click required for the customer to reach the offer, which may be losing 60% of your customers. On the other hand, pre-selling the offer may increase the final conversion rate. That’s assuming you can even get away with going direct to the offer from your PPC engine. Like almost every topic in affiliate marketing, there is no right answer. It depends on tons of different factors, but most notably the offer, and the traffic source. So in general terms let’s explore these 2 factors.

The offer:

The main question for me is, would this offer benefit from pre-selling on a landing page? If so, is that benefit great enough to outweigh the extra click required to get to the offer? Say your landing page has a bounce rate of 50%, so only half of your purchased PPC clicks actually make it to the offer. By going direct from PPC to offer, you can capture 100% of those, but how many will actually convert? By pre-selling on the landing page, you may entice those 50% that do click through to actually convert more than if you sent them directly to the offer. So how do you find out? By testing.

Say you tested both ways and sent 100 clicks directly to the offer and 100 clicks through a landing page, with a $10 lead payout, and got these results:

Direct to offer
• 100 clicks to offer
• 5% conversion rate
• 5 leads
• $50 gross

Through landing page
• 50 pre-sold clicks to offer
• 12% conversion rate
• 6 leads
• $60 gross

So in this case, yes it would be better to use a landing page, since the increase overall conversion rate offsets the loss of clicks from the extra step of the landing page.

More on this link: http://www.cdfnetworks.com/landing-page-or-redirect-that-is-the-question/

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics of Boosting Website Traffic

2007-10-13T00:05:00.001-07:00

earch engine optimization is vital if you want to get your website listed at the top of the search engine rankings. You will have to design and write your pages not only for the customer, but also for the search engine spiders and crawlers. It does not have to be hard and it does not have to make you pull your hair out in frustration. By following a few tips on how to go about writing your pages, you will find success with your website.

One of the first mistakes that most people make when designing a website is that they think about the entire website. Do not concentrate on the entire site. Instead, create your landing page with only that page in mind. The rest of the design will come later.

Next, narrow down your list of keywords to keyword phrases. Make sure they are highly targeted keyword phrases. For example, if you sell motor oil your keyword phrase would be motor oil and not just oil. Remember that people, when searching for your website in the search engines, will search for general phrases, and not just keywords.

After you have chosen your phrase to use, put it into a search engine and see what comes up. This is an honest way to check out your competition and to get a real look at how your keywords work. You might find that your keywords are highly popular, and you will need to rework your phrases. Targeting a keyword that is not highly sought after could lead you to keyword phrases in niche markets. Fortunes have been built of niche markets in the Internet community.

Next you will want to look at your meta tags. The tags are html code that lists the different words in relation to your product on the web page. Search engines look mainly for descriptive tags that tell the engine and visitor what the website is about. If there is no tag, it will use other ways to search for information, like in a cached page of the directories.

When setting up your keyword phrase, include it twice, and make it a clickable title tag too. You will need to describe your information for your page with the keywords. Be creative in the description. Search engines like versatility up to a point.

more on this link: http://www.content4reprint.com/internet-marketing/search-engine-optimization/search-engine-optimization-the-basics-of-boosting-website-traffic.htm

How A Great Landing Page Can Improve Your SEO

2007-10-13T00:03:00.000-07:00

The Importance of a Good Landing Page

The only way to measure the effectiveness of your search engine marketing campaign is through the reaction to your landing pages. Landing pages are the heart of the search engine optimization strategy, and your statistics will show whether or not you have done the work you need to in order to make sure your site works for you. Let’s take a look at what a landing page is and why it matters so much for the success of your web site.

What is a landing page?

Basically a landing page is any page on your site where searchers “land” when they click a link on a search engine. Search engines rank pages according to formula known only to their staff but that is the subject of a lot of educated guess work and testing, and the better the criteria matches the material on your page the higher your landing page will be in the rankings.

There are two basic types of landing pages, both defined by the type of site you are running. Reference landing pages present information that the searcher is looking for; the value for the visitor is in the facts or entertainment they can glean from the page. For the web site developer, the success of the reference landing page is measured in the revenue of the advertising that is displayed on the page.

Transactional landing pages are landing pages which encourage a searcher to take a direct course of action, which can be anything from signing up for an account to simply filling out a form with some basic questions.

While it might seem easier to create a successful reference landing page, creating a transitional landing page can be a lot more fun, especially if you really know what you are doing.

Major benefits of a landing page

We have talked about the importance of landing pages as far as the monetization of a site, but landing pages are really the key to the success of your whole site. Here is a quick look at some other areas where a good landing page will really benefit your site.

A good landing page will lead searchers further in. No really good website consists of just one page with a bunch of writing on it. When you are designing your landing page(s) you should always look to encouraging visitors to delve deeper into what your site has to offer. A reference landing page with good links to other pages in the site will work to this purpose. With a transactional web site, a good landing page will tease visitors just enough to get them to fill out some information in order to learn more.

more on this link:http://www.seocrunch.com/how-a-great-landing-page-can-improve-your-seo

Internet Video Search Optimization Starting To Get Noticed

2007-10-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

By Jim Kukral | October 11, 2007

It was only a matter of time. Many search firms are beginning to wake up to the fact that they need to start making and optimizing online videos if they want to get in on the next big wave of successful search optimization.

Toprankblog.com has a wonderful article talking about the overall possibilities of optimizing for universal search. In this piece, they talk about video search.

Video is the New Rock Star of Search
The product page on the company web site can also include the short video to give visitors another way in which to learn about the product. Embedding the video in the product web page also gives search engines another media format to index and display in unified search results. Submitting the product video to video sharing web sites such as YouTube.com with a relevant, keyword-rich description will make it even easier for the video to appear in video search and unified search results.

To take it a step further, you could upload screen captures of the video to image sharing sites and link back to the video from the description. The image and video could also be packaged with the press release to provide the media more interesting and engaging ways to learn about the new product. Submitting the press release via wire services can also leverage new search visibility. There are many more steps possible in promoting such content ranging from social bookmarking to blogger relations to the creation of viral linking campaigns, but this is a start, a foundation.

Indeed, we believe Internet video marketing is the next big step for search. Check out our new Instant Replay program if you’re interested in hearing more about how video can work for your business.

Source on this link:http://www.fathomseo.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/11/internet-video-search-optimization-starting-to-get-noticed/

Google Accounts for 61% of Global Search

2007-10-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

osted by Jim Hedger @ 8:34 am

Using a more comprehensive scoring system, comScore released its August 2007 search engine market numbers this week showing Google serving 61% of all search queries worldwide. The report also shows how many searches were conducted by continental region.

According to comScore’s figures, there were 61,036,000,000 (61 billion) searches conducted by 754,459,000 unique search users around the world. The largest number of those unique users, (257,952,000) live in the Asia-Pacific region followed by Europe (209,678,000) and North America (206,278,000). Latin America and the Middle East had the lowest number of unique search users with 49,995,000 accessing search from Central and South America and 30,556,000 entering search queries from the Middle East.

When searching, the majority of all users turn to Google. Here is a short breakdown of the Top10 search related properties in August 2007 as measured by comScore:

Worldwide - 61,036,000,000 searches in Aug2007

Google - 37,094,000,000 searches (60.7%)
Yahoo! - 8,549,000,000 searches (14.0%)
Baidu - 3,253,000,000 searches (5.3%)
Microsoft 2,166,000,000 searches (3.5%)
NHN 2,044,000,000 searches (3.3%)
eBay 1,319,000,000 searches (2.1%)
AOL 1,212,000,000 searches (1.9%)
Ask 746,000,000 searches (1.2%)
Fox 683,000,000 searches (1.1%)
Lycos 441,000,000 searches (0.7%)

Source on this link:http://www.metamend.com/blog/2007/10/11/google-accounts-for-61-of-global-search/

Search Engine Optimization Report Free: a Site Vs a Competitor

2007-10-12T23:39:00.000-07:00

posted by: Steven J. Ram

Released today, antRoar internet marketing offers an SEO Report for free. The report covers on the page factors relating to rankings in Google or Yahoo and is compared to a competitor.

Melbourne, Australia, October 11, 2007 --(PR.com)-- antRoar's free SEO report covers all the main criteria required to find out how good a web site's optimization is compared to that of a competitor.

The report distinguishes the differences between an optimized Google web site listing for specific keywords as opposed to what an un-optimized page would be. The free SEO report also compares a site's competitor with the same search engine optimization analysis.

The report includes Optimization Advice and Advanced Analysis which includes:

1. Optimization advice.
2. Advanced analysis.
3. General page properties.
4. On-the-page factors influencing rankings.
5. Competitor Analysis.

The information supplied with in the free report is both detailed and direct. The help advice is comprehensive and detailed and can be understood by anyone owning a web site business or wishing to.

The free optimization report is emailed to the respondent within 24 hours and is enclosed in a zip format.

Free SEO Report : http://www.antroar.com/free-website-report.html

More on this link:http://www.pr.com/press-release/55474

Why Keyword Analysis?

2007-10-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

posted by: Rishi Modi, Certified SEO Professional

Keyword analysis is one of the most important steps of search engine optimization. Search engine optimizers start search engine optimization by doing a keyword analysis and then move on to other aspects. To understand how keyword analysis affects search engine optimization, it is important to understand what is keyword analysis? And how is keyword analysis carried out?

All natural searches on Google are triggered by keywords. When a user enters a specific search query each relevant word in the query is referred to as a Keyword. For example, all three words in “Cheap cars US” form a single keyword, in addition the phrase ‘Cheap cars’ is also a keyword. In essence, a website has to be optimized for a set of keywords; the choice of keywords to be targeted is influenced by doing a keyword analysis. Google has a tool known as the Google Sandbox or Google AdWords keyword tool which is used for keyword analysis. The Google keyword tool is just one of the software used to generate a comprehensive report on each keyword. A typical keyword analysis will include the popularity of a keyword, the number of search queries for the keyword and also a complete record of the keyword’s search history.

A search engine optimizer basis his choice of keywords not just on statistics, some times a statistically unpopular keyword (known as a niche keyword) can also help increase traffic to a website. For example, a copywriter’s website should be optimized for keywords like “Ghostwriting services”, but a smart search engine optimizer will also optimize a website for “Ghostwriting firm” because people from different parts of the world use the term ‘firm’ as well. In essence, keyword selection is not just based on stats and figures; there is a lot of smart work involved in selecting a keyword.

Additionally, customers also have a set of keywords they want their website to be optimized for. Search engine optimizers usually base their keyword selection on more than one criterion, and an effective keyword analysis is essential for effective search engine optimization. A typical keyword analysis also takes into account the advertising competition for a keyword. Google allows webmasters to promote their website for keywords, the higher the advertising competition the more competitive a keyword usually is.

more on this link: http://www.submitedge.com/blog/?p=33

SEO?

2007-10-12T23:31:00.000-07:00

Yup, you heard that right. SEO not CEO. SEO mean search engine optimization. SEO is such a hot subject that there are even books out there, thick books just for this subject, SEO. In fact, SEO is the basis of making money online. Without SEO, even when your website has really good quality contents, excellent topics and pictures but viewership and readership is always at minimum because the road to your website was never built. It is like having a beautiful mansion but hidden in the lost forest. People just couldn’t find their way to your website.

more on this link: http://www.emocha.net/2007/10/11/seo/

Increase Your Websites Visibility

2007-10-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

October 11, 2007; 04:55 AM

Optimizing your site is one way of gaining traffics from the search engines. To have your site optimized for the search engines means to attempt to have your site appear in the top of the search engine results pages whenever a specific keyword is typed into the search box. It is important to realize that search engines are trying to provide their users with the most relevant sites for any particular query. We need to remember that the quality and the content of a sites plays a big role on how you can rank your site in the first page of the search engines.

There's a lot of strategies/ techniques we can use for us to achieved this includes optimizing meta tags where in you have to think of the right description and targeted keywords that you're going to use by checking the density and prominence, analyzing the website contents, creating blogs which provides additional information for your sites, creating (sitemaps, .htacess, robot.txt), link building which includes Article Submission, Directory Submission, Online Groups Submission, Classified/Ads Posting and Forum posting. Link Exchange to relevant sites is ideal to begin the process of a link campaign and an essential variable in attaining high rankings. It can be done in 3 ways(1 way, 3 way and reciprocal linking). Through these strategies, you can rank highly from the search engines and take your organization to the next level of success. And always remember that be consistent, with constant shifts in algorithms daily, make sure your website is not omitted from ranking competitively.

Just having a well-optimized website is not sufficient to achieve success. It is necessary for an authority to recognize the feat officially, or else the achievement will be worthless. Therefore, in case of online business, the achievements of a website must be recognized by the search engines. This field of marketing online never rests, much like your competition. SEO is a constant evolving technology that keeps even the season pros on their heels. It was not too many years ago that search engine optimization and submission were considered fairly easy. Those days are far, far behind us.

more on this link: http://www.promotionworld.com/news/press/071011seosolutions.html

How can SEO improve your marketing strategy?

2007-10-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

2007-10-10 18:22:56 - Are you aware of the difference between Pay per Click and SEO? The search engines have many tools to help you market your business online, but it can become a minefield if you don't know exactly how to use them effectively.

It is a common misconception to think that hits are good and just getting the highest possible number of people to your site is the best thing for your business. With Google Adsense and similar tools the opposite can be true. You're paying for every visitor to your site, so visitors can become very costly to your business with little
or no return.

"...more than just a numbers game."

With SEO managed by UltraIT, it's more than just a numbers game. We spend a great deal of time and effort researching your goals, your products and what your potential customers are searching for on the web. For example if you sell property in Malaga, there is no use being number one for 'property for sale in Madrid' (obvious, you may think), but equally if you have apartments for sale in Malaga, is being number 1 for the keyword 'Malaga' on its own actually going to bring in the people that want to buy your products and services?

more on the link: http://www.pr-inside.com/how-can-seo-improve-your-marketing-r239736.htm

What is Search Engine Optimization? What is SEO?

2007-10-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

What is Search Engine Optimization? What is SEO?
1 Oct 2007 at 19:43 by Joshua J. Steimle

What is SEO? That's easy, it's an acronym for search engine optimization. Explaining what search engine optimization is will take slightly more time. Bear in mind this is for people who don't have a clue, so if you already know anything about SEO, this post is not for you. For those of you who aren't sure what a search engine and are wondering how one is optimized, read on.

First of all, it's not the search engine that gets optimized, but rather your website gets optimized for search engines. And what does that mean? Well, listen up and I'll tell you.

To explain what SEO is, we first need to understand some of the basics about search engines. A search engine is a website that helps you find other websites. The most famous and most profitable search engine is Google. Let's go there right now. Click this link and Google will open in a new window or tab.

Now, let's suppose you wanted to buy a house in Utah. You don't live in Utah? That's ok, it's just an investment property. Type in "buy a house in utah" and then click on the button that says "Google Search". What's it mean to get lucky? Just ignore it, it doesn't matter. Once you click on that button you're going to get a screen that looks like this.

google

If you're wondering how Google makes all those tens of billions of dollars this is it. See the red area that says "paid advertisements? Those are ads. Like billboards, or TV commercials. People and companies put their ads there, and if you click on one of those ads, then it costs the advertiser money. It's sort of an auction system, and whoever bids the highest gets into first place. Well, it's not entirely an auction system, but let's not get complicated just yet, right?

The other search results are called "natural" or "organic" search results. Why? Because Google decides which websites show up in those results based on a formula or algorithm they've developed. Now put yourself in Google's shoes for a moment and ask yourself this question "As Google, what kind of search results do I want to give to people if I want people to keep using me?" Wouldn't you want to give them search results that make them happy? You make people happy and they'll keep coming back for more, any drug dealer will tell you that.

Now switch back to being yourself. In this case, Google has decided that the website at utahhomes.com is the website that will make people happier than any other website possibly can when they search for "buy a house in utah". But who owns utahhomes.com? Why, it's Coldwell Banker. How much do you think that #1 spot is worth to Coldwell Banker? How many other realtors do you think would like to have that spot? And guess how much CB paid Google for that spot...exactly nothing. CB doesn't pay Google a dime to be in that spot, and they don't pay if someone clicks on that link. Meanwhile the guys right above and to the right in the paid ads areas are paying as much as $20 every time somebody clicks on their link.

And get this, most people don't click on the ads. You see, a lot of people know about the ads, and they don't trust them since anyone can buy their way in there, so they click on the natural results more often. So CB gets more clicks than the guys paying and doesn't pay a dime!

Ok, that's not exactly true. CB doesn't pay Google a dime, but the question you must ask is how the heck did they get there then? Ah...this is where SEO comes into play.

As I mentioned earlier, Google uses a formula or algorithm to rank websites from the #1 spot on down. The only problem is they won't tell anyone what that formula is. But there are those of us who make a living by figuring out what that formula is, and then we sell our expertise to clients who pay us to tweak their websites to better match Google's formula. Call us SEO consultants, SEO professionals, SEO nerds, or whatever you want, the point is that there are companies like CB that make a lot of money by being in that #1 spot, and they're willing to pay a lot of money to get there or stay there. Think about it, if CB sells one additional house per month by virtue of being in that #1 spot vs. being at #20, how much is that worth to them? Let's see...6% commission on a $500K home is $30K, right? Do you think they'd pay $15K per month to the guy who can keep them at #1? You betcha, and they're probably selling more than one $500K home per month as a result of that position.

Do you sell a product or service? If you do, then chances are people are looking for it on search engines like Google. How much would it be worth to you to be in that #1 spot for a few keywords related to what you do? Worth hiring an SEO firm or learning SEO on your own? Well, here are some resources in case you're interested in either:

10 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Small Businesses
Search Engine Optimization Whitepaper - 10 Tips
How SEO Professionals Trick You
Common SEO Misconceptions
What is Linkbaiting or Link Bait and Why Should I Care?
Backlink Basics
Basic Keyword Strategy
Hiring an SEO Consultant
The Trap of Affordable SEO Services
Do-It-Yourself SEO Options
Recommended List of SEO Consultants, Experts, Firms & Service Providers
Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Ranking Factors

Top 10 Reasons You Must Do SEO

2007-10-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

By Mark Jackson, The ClickZ Network

Five reasons SEO rocks PPC:

1. PPC and CPC: Not Your Lenin’s CCCP: Paid Search, AKA PPC or pay-per-click search marketing, is no communist manifesto. Online marketing's ultimate expression of capitalism may be the pay-per-click auction. It's as close to a free market free-for-all as you can get, with one exception: marketers buy their way into the GYM (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) and Ask, as well as other major search engines.

So PPC isn't really a free-for-all. It's a "free-for-none."

Companies, large and small, jump into the pay-per-click arena due to its simplicity. It's easy to choose keywords and bid, bid, bid.

The benefits: advertisers set a monthly budget, choose the text (or creative), and choose landing pages that show up in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

The downside: the rules of paid search are so simple, playing is easy. Many, many companies are already in the game. The more companies involved in the auction, the higher the CPC (cost-per-click) and, in general, the lower the chance for a significant ROI (return on investment).

Moreover, when budget runs out for a given month, advertisers may lose their presence in the search engines.

With organic SEO, Web sites can -- and do -- show up 24/7/365. While SEO can’t “guarantee” any site owner high rankings in search results, you can spread your presence across a multitude of keywords. As long as sites have pages/content to support selected keywords, SEO can deliver a more consistent presence across all the major search engines.

2. High Cost of Competitive Keywords: If your traffic-driving keywords are highly competitive, "buying" a regular presence on the major search engines may be cost-prohibitive. Outsourced SEO may provide the presence you're looking for at a fraction of the cost. If that's an option you'd like to explore, make sure the firms you interview devise a solid strategy to get you where you want to go. Again, though, there are no guarantees in SEO. But, over time, with a diligent plan, some great things can be accomplished.

Companies must measure the success of SEO campaigns by hard metrics: growth in targeted organic search traffic; increased number of leads; or increases in sales volume, for example. Many clients and prospects, though, tend to gravitate to ranking reports to see how their presence has increased or decreased against a given set of monitored keywords.

3. Ad Blockers Tackle PPC Ads: I was reading this week, in Advertising Age, about Adblock Plus, which blocks not only pop-ups and banners, but paid search ads as well. No question; some people just want the editorial. With organic SEO, you’re there. If you think about the adoption rate of pop-up blockers (who, reading this article, doesn’t already have them installed?), then you might want to be a little concerned about the adoption rate of ad blockers now tackling paid search. Certainly, search ads are often relevant and mostly unobtrusive (in my view). However, consider the number of people who download ad blockers and enable the "block all ads” function. Something to think about.

4. Organic Clicks Rule, Naturally: No matter what study you believe -- and there are many -- a great deal of evidence shows that more people click on organic results than paid placements. Some studies suggest around 60 percent of searchers click on organic results. Others indicate the percentage is much higher. In any event, organic results get the majority of the clicks, which means organic gets you the best results.

5. Search Engine "Seal of Approval"? No search engine gives a seal of approval or endorses any companies that come up in organic search results. Nor do search engine endorse companies that advertise in their paid-search networks. However, when your site ranks high in search engine results, there's a strong case for user perception of "implied endorsement." When you advertise in paid search, many -- if not most -- searchers realize you've paid to get your Web site in the sponsored listings. With organic SEO, the user will likely believe in the ability of the search engine indexing to deliver relevant results.

6. ROI: From all of the search engine optimization programs I’ve overseen (I’m guessing that the number is around 250), there have been few that have not generated a positive ROI. For those that didn’t, it was due to a failed business plan or a poor user experience on the Web site. A properly planned and executed search engine optimization campaign generates a terrific return on investment, so long as you plan for search engine optimization to be a long-term commitment and not a three-month tactical strategy.

I could share with you a case study in which one of our clients received almost $11,000,000 worth of organic traffic to their site from January to May of this year. And, I should add, they are not in a “popular” space (that is, they’re not selling consumer electronics, or something else with a high number of searches performed against it). I determined this value by looking at the increased number of clicks from organic search, year over year, and valued this by their average CPC from their Google AdWords campaign. And you can be certain that we didn’t charge anywhere near $11,000,000 during that five month time period.

7. Interactive PR: Perhaps you’ve had some bad press. Perhaps those mentions are showing up in Google when someone searches for your company name. These things can be addressed. There are search engine optimization methods that can help to push those “bad” results to the second page, and leave positive results on the first page.

A good case study in Interactive PR is Wal-Mart, in which there are Web sites such as walmartwatch.com and wakeupwalmart.com that are not exactly flattering to the company. These Web sites rank within the top ten results on Google for the search phrase “walmart.” I have witnessed steps taken by Walmart to deal with this issue, but these two Web sites still rank. Through tactics such as creating a charity website (walmart.org could be a Web site set up to speak to their charitable efforts, for example), you can almost assure yourself of having one less of these unfavorable Web sites showing up in the top ten results.

8. “Unlimited” Clicks: You don’t set a budget, as you would with PPC, and have the budget dry up by the middle of the month only to leave you hanging until the first of the next month. Once you’ve achieved rankings, the clicks just keep on coming. Too often, PPC clients must daypart their efforts or otherwise manage when they will have a presence in the search engines. What about that off chance that a good prospect was searching on a Sunday afternoon? With an organic presence, you will be there 24/7 to capture all the traffic that you can. As mentioned above, there really is no limit -- other than the total number of searches being performed-- to how much traffic your site could receive from organic search engine optimization efforts.

9. Production of More Quality Content: The more you focus on organic search engine optimization efforts, the more likely you are to add quality copy to your site, which is good for both SEO and the user experience. Certainly, there’s a balance to be had between having too much and too little content. You do not want the user to get lost in reading or to miss the point of converting into a lead/sale, etc. In some cases, you have to be creative. Including things like tips, reviews, forums, blogs, and other insightful information can be good for the user experience and great for search engine optimization. I’ve witnessed Web sites built with no intention of doing well in the search engines do well due to the fact that they were focused on providing great content for their visitors. These things go hand in hand.

10. Accessibility: A good search engine optimization firm will help you to make your Web site more accessible to those with disabilities (Section 508 compliance), which also makes your Web site more search engine friendly. Part of building an accessible Web site is making sure that internal linking (links within your Web site pointing from one page to another) includes your keywords within the link itself. A blind person using a screen reader to navigate your Web site will know the link saying, “email marketing services,” is pointing to the page of your site about “email marketing services.”

When you focus on what's good for visitors (understanding that some of these people may be affected by some form of disability), you will also help your SEO efforts. Conversely, a good search engine optimization firm should be able to assist you in making your Web site Section 508 compliant by making your Web site more search engine friendly.

So, if you didn’t already believe that search engine optimization was a worthwhile investment, you now have a few more reasons for putting in the necessary time/energy/money to help your business grow through SEO.

Source on the link:http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627182

SEO Techniques to Avoid

2007-10-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

A wide variety of techniques can be used for search engine optimization (SEO) of your website, most of them beneficial. However, there are some techniques you should avoid spending time or money on, because they can actually harm your site’s ranking in search results. Here are a few of the SEO techniques to avoid…

FFA PAGES: “Free For All” link pages allow users to post links to them free of charge, supposedly increasing traffic and providing SEO benefits. The problem is that search engines view them as link manipulation, and may penalize websites with links on them. Most FFA pages and networks have low PageRanks on Google, some of them with a rank of zero. The links are generally seen by very few people before falling off their lists, making them minimally useful for generating direct traffic.

KEYWORD SPAMMING: While repeatedly using search keywords on a webpage is one of the effective SEO techniques, overusing it is sometimes referred to as “keyword spamming.” One example of keyword spamming is to use the phrase “ps/2 keyboards” in every sentence on a page of your website because you want it to be listed at the top of the search results for “ps/2 keyboards.” Search engines can detect this, and may give the page a poorer ranking. Also, people visiting the page will find the wording extremely redundant, and are likely to leave and avoid visiting the website again.

TAG MISUSE: Another one of the SEO techniques to avoid is putting large quantities of unrelated or barely-related keywords in the META tags of webpages. This technique is ineffective, time-consuming, and will make the pages load less quickly. If it does work, visitors will often leave the page after determining it is unrelated with what they searched for, but not before consuming some of the website’s bandwidth.

SELF-REPLICATING LINKS: Basically, in “self-replicating” link systems each user signs up via another user’s page, and a new page is created featuring a link to the new user’s website, the previous user’s site, and the sites of several users who signed up at higher levels of the pyramid-like structure. While this technique appears as if it might bring SEO or traffic benefits, it is better to avoid because the pages have almost identical content (search engines may avoid counting them separately), all of the links are located on the same domain, and many users fail to succeed in spreading a link to more than a few other pages.

While there are always some exceptions in which undesirable SEO techniques might produce good results, it is usually best to avoid the above-mentioned techniques and spend time building genuine links to your website and creating search engine optimized webpages which provide useful information. Generally, it is preferable to take the approach of trying to make search engines detect your website’s desirability for particular search phrases, rather than using artificial techniques intended to “trick” them.

Source From the Link: http://www.marketverticalpartners.com/index.php

The Correct Use of Anchor Text Links

2007-10-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

Links from one website to another usually have anchor text, unless they are links in the form of images. Anchor text consists of the word(s) which are visible and have to be clicked on to use the links. There are a variety of ways to use anchor text which work, but some offer more benefits than others.

When you use correct methods of creating anchor text links, it can make your web pages shorter (which makes them load faster and use less bandwidth) and have search engine optimization benefits. If you are linking to another web site/page you own or receive income from, using a descriptive anchor text phrase may improve the ranking in search results of the page you are linking to. Even if you receive no benefit from people visiting the other website, using correct and descriptive link text will help search engines provide users with more relevant results. Applying correct anchor link wording also helps visually-impaired people use the website more easily.

Websites often use phrases such as “To visit Burlington Vermont’s website, click here”, with “click here” as the anchor text for the link. A more correct way to do this would be to simply have a link with the anchor text “Burlington, Vermont.” This isn’t as long, and will have the above-mentioned effect on search results. Thus, after search engines have found this link, people will be more likely to see the Burlington, VT city website in results from searching for “Burlington, Vermont.” It is also more convenient for visually-impaired people using software which reads the web page to them, as the link destinations can be more easily identified. However, you should be careful not to have any other words on the same page which look like links (underlined and a different color than the rest of the words).

Full or partial URL addresses are also sometimes used as anchor text. This eliminates the above-mentioned search engine benefits, is usually longer than other forms of links, and is generally unnecessary because people can already see the URL by moving their mouse cursors over the links. One exception where an address as the text is more correct involves links to e-mail addresses. Not everyone uses software based e-mail programs (others use web-based systems like Yahoo! Mail), so it is more convenient to make available both the actual e-mail address and a link to it. As for references to competitors’ websites or sites you disapprove of, it is better not to create links to them at all, as it will only help such websites by improving their search rank.

Keeping these recommendations in mind should help you use anchor text links in a more correct manner, both making your website easier to use and providing search engine optimization benefits.

Read more on the link: http://www.marketverticalpartners.com/index.php

The Latest Local Search facts and figures

2007-03-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

Piper Jaffrey recently put out a fantastic paper on many things search and internet related entitled "The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium". This 425 page report covers a wide variety of topics, but I'm going to concentrate here on those related to local search, and IYP.

Firstly the basics, 70% of Americans are now using the internet, with usage growing 18% per annum. The internet is now the second leading medium at home, behind TV, and is easily the leading medium at work. 82% of users are over 18, and they spend 88% of the total online minutes.

How pervasive is local search? Well, in response to how often users used different services, email came in at 100%, local search actually came in 2nd at 57.6%, ahead of Instant Messaging, online purchases, music downloads, blog reading / publishing, social networking, and the rest. Quite an amazing number really, but does that mean that there isn't that much room for growth? If the potential usage increase that can be had is slightly less than double, then is the market fairly saturated? Not by long shot, unlike a service such as IM, there is a large offline equivalent to local search, that can be migrated online and monetized (once a winning monetization strategy has been arrived at). So what do they consider to be the potential market for local search? Well, they have the current total local ad market (local search, IYP, and classifieds) at $4.489 billion dollars, which makes it 12% of the current offline spend of $37 billion. In their opinion online dollars in this area has the potential to reach 70% of offline spend, so the total potential that they show stands at around 2.59 bilion dollars. This shows that there's clearly a lot of room for growth in this sector. Of course the next question is that of canibalization. Many offline publishers expressed concerns that moving online would chip away at their core offline business. According to this graphic, that isn't happening. Instead the IYPs are expanding the overall market, without negatively affecting the print market which has remained fairly static.

source taken from: http://searchenginetigers.com/2007/03/latest-local-search-facts-and-figures.html

Buyers & Information Seekers Search Differently

2007-02-23T00:59:00.000-08:00

A study released by De Vos & Jansen Market Research and Checkit reveals that buyers and information seekers search differently. Here are some key findings, however, you can download the full report as a PDF document
Buyers view more search results (10) and take more time to view the results (11,4 seconds).
Information searchers view less search results (8) and spend less time on a result (9,4 seconds).
Buyers pay more attention to brand names relative to information seekers.
Only 50 searchers were tested and they were between the age of 17 and 24.

Posted by Barry Schwartz
source taken from: http://searchengineland.com/070222-092607.php

Yahoo Launching Separate Content Advertising Platform

2007-02-22T21:22:00.000-08:00

Yahoo is launching a separate content platform, according to the email I received earlier today.
The email states:
In the next coming months, Yahoo! Search Marketing will introduce a new serving platform for Content Match. This new platform is designed to improve listing relevance, power the Yahoo! Search Marketing Distribution Network, and improve the end-user experience.
The new Content Match platform includes an improved matching algorithm and real-time optimization that, in addition to bid, will consider additional relevancy factors like keywords, title and description to determine your listing position.

Source taken from: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070222-131733

Google AdWords Quality Score Algorithm Update Now Live

2007-02-22T21:08:00.000-08:00

The AdWords blog post says that the algorithm is now live and it will take about three to four days to fully propagate throughout the network.
If you have not enabled the quality score column, you probably should. To do that, just go down to your ad group level, click on the keywords tab on the top right, then select from the pull down menu the option to show the quality score. Here is a screen capture with arrows pointing to the relevant places but more on that at AdWords help.

Source taken from: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012481.html

What Quality Score does?
Your Quality Score reflects your keyword's CTR and the relevance of your ad text and landing page. Keywords with high Quality Scores are more relevant for users, more effective for your ad campaigns, and have lower minimum CPC bids.

Keywords can have one of three Quality Score states:
• Great: Your keyword is very relevant and your Quality Score needs no improvement.
• OK: Your keyword is relevant, but you can still benefit from a higher Quality Score.
• Poor: This keyword isn't very relevant to users and we suggest you replace it with a more specific keyword. If you would like to keep advertising with this keyword, we recommend optimizing by using more targeted ad text and improving your landing page content.

Advantages of PPC Over Other Web Marketing Strategies

2007-02-22T02:49:00.000-08:00

The internet business is highly competitive. Getting to the top of search engine results is always a challenge. One way of ensuring good position in search results is Pay Per Click Advertising. Today, PPC is a well utilized advertising option online. Its advantages are evident and it provides advertisers with high hopes of making it to the top.

Definition of PPC

PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It is an advertising option that involves a cost per click directed to a particular website from a PPC search engine or its affiliates. In PPC, advertisers pay for visitors on a cost per click basis. Search engines can also show PPC ads. E.g. Google lists its PPC ads on Sponsored Listing. However, PPC ads differ from sponsored listings in such a way that the first is practically cost per click while the latter may or may not be on a cost per click payment arrangement.

Special Features of PPC

Unlike other advertising options, PPC can help your site’s visibility on an instant. It gives your website a better position on SERPs using the keywords of your choice. In PPC, you can take control of your advertisement, from the cost to the keywords. Basically, PPC is definite and flexible.

Website advertisers employing the PPC strategy can decide on what keywords or keyword phrases they want they site to be listed. After the selection, they bid for these keywords and keyword phrases. This gives them full control of their advertisement. Aside from the keywords, PPC advertisers can also take control of the language in which they want their ads to appear. Furthermore, they can also choose the exact location where they want their ads to appear.

These features attract advertisers to use PPC instead of other forms of online advertising. Because of this, PPC has earned its own set of advantages.

Advantages of PPC

A high percentage of websites today rely on PPC advertising for their visibility needs. This can be reasonably justified given the following advantages:

PPC is cost per click.

One advantage that PPC has over other online advertising options is that advertisers have to pay for every click only. There is no need to worry about a high fixed cost that you ought to pay every month or on whatever payment terms. The cost per click also allows the advertisers to gauge how a particular site is doing in the internet market – judging on the number of visitors the site has attracted.

PPC is easy to implement.

Website owners or administrators don’t need certain modifications on the website if they choose PPC as their advertising option. This will be useful to sites which may be hard to modify. E.g. sites with frames.

PPC offers immediate results.

Once you choose PPC, you will get immediate results. The ads you placed on PPC search engines appear instantly. There is also an option to either modify or delete the ad.

PPC lets you in control.

PPC gives the advertisers a complete control on their ads. The advertisers decide on the ads’ location, keywords and language specification.

Pay Per Click Advertising is an indispensable way to generate traffic to your website. If done accordingly, PPC will be of great help to your site’s visibility and profitability.

source taken from:http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2097216,00.asp

Giant step to discovering alien life

2007-02-22T02:39:00.000-08:00

Astronomers have captured enough light from two planets far beyond our own solar system to reveal details of their chemical make-up, marking a new phase in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Scientists have analysed the glow from a planet, nicknamed Osiris, in the constellation Pegasus

By analysing the faint glow of one of these alien worlds they have found tentative evidence that suggests the presence of chemicals which play a role in one theory of how life began on Earth.

The chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, may have helped the formation of RNA, the ancestral genetic material of DNA, the building-blocks of life on our own planet.

Although this planet seems to lack water and is at a searing 800 C - which is thought to be much too hot for life - three teams announce today they have successfully carried out the feat on this and one other alien world, marking a breakthrough in the development of techniques capable of scouring the cosmos for signs of life.

More Of this from:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/22/nalien22.xml

7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization

2007-02-22T02:25:00.000-08:00

This is by no means a definitive look at what matters on landing pages. There are more than seven rules. For additional insight I would direct you to this three-part series on Landing Page Optimization. However, these seven basic elements are ones I’ve used consistently for many years now with great results.

1. Have a Clear and Direct Headline
Your landing pages should designed so the headline is first thing a user sees upon landing. First impressions on landing pages are as important as the offline world. Make sure the headline is a direct and simple statement of what the user is trying to accomplish. The goal of the headline is to bridge the moment of recognition so the user knows they rest of the page is aligned with completing their goal.

2. Place High Value on Whitespace
Users do not read all the text on a web page. Users scan the text and take away only certain elements that they use to make a decision if the page is relevant to their goal or not. Clean use of space allows users to scan and absorb key messages.

3. Deliver Your Value Proposition with Short Direct Messaging
Your value props should all be the answers to “why?” Keep them limited to three or four bullet points and don’t mince words. This is no time to get cute either. If users can’t quickly and easily understand the benefits of you product or service they will not hesitate to click the back button.

4. Have a Persuasive Message Directly Above the Call to Action
Every great salesman has a message they use to persuade prospects on the fence. Think of your landing page as your online salesman. Make sure you have one final strong persuasive message above the call to action. I find that bandwagon messages can increase user confidence and usually perform very well. An example: “Join the thousands of people that use…”

5. Large Red Buttons Rule
Tell your brand team to go to hell and throw your styleguide out the window. Red buttons can by themselves raise your conversion rate. Green can be good as well but most times in our testing if color matters it is red that wins. Also, don’t skimp on button size. Make users notice where the button is upon landing. Location matters as well but that’s something that needs to be tested on each page.

6. Call to Action Copy Matters
While direct messages can be very effective in the body of the copy direct messages in the call to action can be a turnoff. Words like “Buy,” “Add to Cart” or “Subscribe” that message commitment and a process can lower conversion rates. Softer calls to action like "Try it Now" that message immediacy (Now), but in a risk free way (Try it) can end up improving conversion by getting more users into the funnel.

7. Trust and Security is Still Incredibly Persuasive
Brand, trust and security icons as well as testimonials deliver confidence messages that can have a tremendous impact on conversion. Despite the fact that we are about 10 years into the commercial web, users on even the largest sites and brands in the world are influenced by these messages and images. You can see in this case study the impact that the Verisign and eTrust logo had on revenue per visitor for Audible.com.

Source taken from: http://www.optimizeandprophesize.com/jonathan_mendezs_blog/2007/02/7_rules_for_lan.html

SEO 2007: The Know-How you Need to Succeed

2007-02-22T02:13:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest challenges that all webmasters face is of course the ever daunting task of SEO . If you are unsure what it is, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, meaning how you as a webmaster can get Google, Yahoo, and MSN among others to rank your website in the top search results for the keywords you are targeting. When I personally approach SEO, I do not look at it as just a single task at hand. Instead, I break it down, most notably into 2 main categories that I can focus on.

In its simplest form, I like to divide SEO down into 2 more manageable areas. The first area that I break it into is On-site Optimization, and the second area, predictably is Off-site Optimization. Both are important, many webmasters do not grasp or utilize this. Some of them preach that on-site optimization is truly the only important form of SEO, while others will tell you that off-site optimization is what will get you top rankings in the search engines. But the real deal is that they are both important, and you should not ignore either of them. So what is the difference between the two.

In a nutshell, On-site optimization is the editing and coding of your actual website to increase optimization. Off-site optimization is the Link Popularity, Link Relevance, and anything else that is not a direct change to your own webpage. For a good example of just how powerful Off-site optimization is, Google the word “failure“. I am sure that George Bush is not optimizing for that term anywhere on the Whitehouse webpage. In my opinion, the key factors of SEO, in no particular order are:

1) Link Popularity and Link Relevance (Off-site) 2) Internal Linking Structure (On-site) 3) Content Relevance (On-site) 4) Crawl-ability / Code Optimization (On-site)

This may seem like I a dumbing down of the art of SEO, which in some regards it is. However, the key factors that I just mentioned above are the basis and are easily broken down into much finer detail, such as the kind that you may find in an in-depth book or report. An important thing to keep in mind in 2007 is that getting high rankings on the Search Engines is not going to happen overnight, sometimes not even for months, just because you have optimized your webpage. If this were 7 or 8 years ago, then keyword stuffing and meta-tags would work just fine. But that tactic will just not cut it in todays competitive search engine market. Do not let this dissuade you though. Just make sure that you utilize a balanced attack of on-site and off-site optimization, through utilization of social-networking sites, link partnering, quality content, text link campaigns and more.

source taken from: http://www.majormarketingtools.com/reports/seo_2007.html