What is SEO?
SEO (Search engine optimization) is simply "the use of search engines to draw traffic to a web site. It is the technique of attaining a higher ranking in search engines and directories via changes to a site to make it more search engine compatible". It is sometimes referred to more generally as search engine marketing, but in fact SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is just one facet of search engine marketing.
SEO specialists or "search engine optimizers" have sprung up to fill the need for these servicesSEO campaign is to find a specialist with a good track record, in an industry plagued with inexperienced and unethical providers. over the past 8+ years. Most search engine optimizers will work either directly with the site administrator or with their web site designer to alter the site's code and content to ensure it gets the exposure it deserves in the most popular search engines and directories. The key to a successful
Companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars on online and offline advertising, including banner ad, Pay Per Click (PPC) and viral marketing campaigns, so one could be forgiven for assuming that these companies do not need free traffic from the "organic" search engine listings.
However, by ignoring the most common method used by people browsing the Internet, these companies are sacrificing an enormous opportunity to attract more traffic to their sites. After all, brick and mortar companies don't refuse to put a sign up in front of their businesses just because they have put large amounts of money into promoting themselves via television advertising. Online companies, likewise, should not disregard optimizing their sites for search engines - a relatively inexpensive exercise - simply because they have put large amount of money into other marketing strategies.
Web site is a very large expense for these companies, ranging from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. To invest such a massive amount of time, money and effort into an online presence and not ensure it can be found is like constructing a storefront without any doors.
It is obvious that companies need to invest in search engine optimization services to ensure their sites are made more search engine compatible and therefore visible to their target markets.
How to choose the Right Domain Name?
SEO Material provides few important rules to choose the right domain name. While the availability of domains which follow all of these rules may have become limited, try to follow as many of these rules as possible.
Consider naming your company and registering a domain name starting with the digit 1. Better still, choose a name starting with "1st". Why? When people create directories of web sites, they have to decide how they are going to classify those web sites. One way to classify web sites is to list them on the basis of how "good" they are. Another way is to simply list them in chronological order (and sometimes in reverse chronological order) based on the dates the sites were submitted.
The other, and far more popular classification system is alphabetic. Now, the first character in the ASCII chart which can be used as the first character in a domain name is the digit 0. The next character is the digit 1.
Normally, you wouldn't want to start a domain name with the digit 0 since it might send all the wrong signals to your customers. For instance, if we had named our domain 0SearchRanking.com, it would be telling our customers that we cannot get them any search engine rankings at all! Hence, unless you really have a good reason for doing so, you should avoid using domain names starting with the digit 0.
Instead name your domains starting with the digit 1. More specifically, name your domains starting with "1st". This will ensure that you get a high alphabetical placement in those directories which classify sites alphabetically. Furthermore, depending on the industry in which your company operates, it may also send the right message across to your customers - it indicates that you are the first company to consider in your industry.
And guess what - the mother of all directories - Yahoo! - lists web sites alphabetically based on the Title that had been submitted. Yahoo! wants the Title to be the official name of the site. This implies that sites which start with the digit 1 will be placed at or near the top of a category. Assuming that you can get your site listed in Yahoo!, just look at what a top ranking in one of the categories in Yahoo!'s directory can do for the popularity of your site!
Furthermore, a small caveat here. If you are going to name a domain starting with "1st", also register the domain which starts with "ist". Then, have the domain containing the vowel "i" redirect visitors to the domain containing the digit 1. This is because people will often type in 'ist' when they mean '1st' and vice-versa. Also, for every email alias that you create for the domain containing "1st " (like sales@1stseo.com), you should create the corresponding email alias for the domain containing "ist" (like sales@istseo.com).
Also, this strategy of registering domains starting with '1st' is mainly applicable if yours is a somewhat new company. If you own a well established concern with a well known domain, you simply cannot change your company name and your domain in a hurry because you will confuse your existing customers.
* Don't want to start your domain name with "1st"? Consider starting it with "A", "B" or "C". Although domains starting with A, B or C will be listed after those starting with the 10 digits, you can still get a pretty high alphabetical placement with A, B or C.
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Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better. Furthermore, for searches conducted in Yahoo!, a higher ranking will be given to those web sites which contain the keywords in the title.
And according to Yahoo!'s instructions, the Title should always be the official name of the site. Thus, if the domain name contains a keyword, you will be able to include the keyword in the Title which will improve your ranking in Yahoo!. As a minor side-benefit, this can also help to increase the ranking of your web site in some search engines. Hence, in an ideal case, you should register a domain of the form 1st[keyword].com (without the brackets of course).
* Try to avoid using domains that contain '2' for "To', '4' for 'For', 'u' for 'You' and so on even if they seem to make your domain sound 'cool'. Your customers will easily get confused if you do so. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering greatthings2do.com, also register greatthingstodo.com.
* Don't register a domain containing the digit 0 in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit 0 is often confused with the vowel O. If you feel that you must register a domain with the digit 0, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain containing the vowel O.
* Always use ".com". If yours is a serious business site, avoid using domains ending in "nu" or "to". Your business will have little credibility if you do so. You can consider registering a ".net" domain, but since most people are familiar with ".com", it is better to stick to convention.
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Should you or should you not use hyphens in your domain? Well, the jury is out on the question. While some Internet marketers will tell you that domains containing hyphens are difficult to remember, spell and pronounce, others will state that domains containing hyphens are, in fact, easy to remember, spell and pronounce. Go figure.
Personally, I would feel that whether or not hyphens are helpful has to be determined on a case by case basis. However, if you register a domain containing hyphens, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain without the hyphens. Once you do that, you can simply redirect visitors from the domain without the hyphens to the domain with the hyphens.
* Don't make your primary domain too long. Even though 67 character domains are a reality, exactly how many of your users will want to type a domain name like thisisanexampleofaverylargedomainname.com?
Register a domain which satisfies all the rules that I outlined above, try to follow as many of the above rules as you can.
11 Basic Ways for Website Promotion
The most important strategy is to rank high for your preferred words on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content on your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing and website promotion.Write Page Title
Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Ammunition, Inc." use "Silver and Platinum Bullets -- Acme Ammunition, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is nearly your entire identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue highlighted portion of the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.
Write Description META Tag
Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases used on this page. If you include keywords that aren't used on the webpage you could hurt yourself. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format:
.
Your maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.
When I prepare a webpage, I write the description first in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and phrases included in the article. Then for the keywords META tag, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty words and phrases.
Write Keywords META Tag
The most important meta tag is Keywords meta tag. Here you specify your all keywords with comma(,) seperated. You can use maximum 20 keywords and must be less then 500 charectors. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format:
For more full more information about keywords and its importants and its kind please read our bollow article.
Keyword & Keyword Density & its importance.
Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3
Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and keyphrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine.
Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text
Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT tags.
Use Keywords in Hyperlinks
Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your page. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important so hyperlink your important keywords. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as What is Google Page Rank? another clue for the search engine.
Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly
Some webmasters use frames, but frames can cause serious problems with search engines. Even if search engines can find your content pages, they could be missing the key navigation to help visitors get to the rest of your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash. Supplement them with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. A site map with links to all your pages can help, too. Be aware that some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages. You can sometimes recognize them by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes stop at the question mark and refuse to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, Yahoo Search Submit Express (formerly SiteMatch), and targeted content pages.
Validate HTML Code
Once you've created a complete HTML file and have deployed it on a Web site, you check it using an online validator service. The service offered by the W3C at http://validator.w3.org is a great place to start. This validator service lets you check a page for compliance with W3C standards by just entering your URL and hitting a button. You'll see a list of errors that are in your page. If you use cascading style sheets (CSS), you can check your syntax using the CSS validator, available through a link from this service. You can check our website htttp://www.seomaterial.com. Its contain no HTML error.
Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords
SEO specialists don't recommend using external doorway or gateway pages any more, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate webpage for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content.
Submit Your Webpage URL to Search Engines
Next, submit your page to the important Web search engines that robotically index the Web. Look for a link on the search engine for "Add Your URL." In the US, the most used search engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, and AskJeeves. Some of these feed search content to the other main search engines and portal sites. For Europe and other areas you'll want to submit to regional search engines. It's a waste of money to pay someone to submit your site to hundreds of search engines. Avoid registering with FFA (Free For All pages) and other link farms. They don't work well, bring you lots of spam e-mails, and could cause you to be penalized by the search engines. We'll talk about submitting to directories under "Linking Strategies" below. If your page is already indexed by a search engine, don't re-submit it unless you've made significant changes; the search engine spider will come back and revisit it soon anyway.
Request Reciprocal Links
Find complementary websites and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that get a similar amount of traffic to your site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages. For more detail to know about linking strategies read out article i.e. Web directory & its importance.
Keyword
A word used by a search engine in its search for relevant Web pages is called Keyword.Importance of Keywords in SEO
Keyword tags are an important element in all web pages. keyword tags are one of the best ways of optimizing the number of visitors on your site.
A good web page should contain the information that people are looking for. So, while developing the content of any web page its really important to find out the important keywords and then to put them in the content of the web page. Basically the keywords can be found easily when u will view as a user or visitor of the web page, find out how the visitor will use the search terms and those search terms will become your most important keywords.
Keyword research is very time consuming but if done right, will provide your website a continuous flow of quality targeted traffic.Using the best keywords to describe your web site helps get those searchers to visit your website. In information retrieval a keyword is a word or phrase which describes a concept found in a document.
Search engines today only want one thing and that is quality, relevant search results that will be of help for all of their users. So, they only find those web pages having good content.
Kinds of Keywords
Before we get into keyword order, let's talk about the different kinds of keywords. there are: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
Primary Keywords
A primary keyword is the keyword or keyword-phrase that you'll use before all other keywords. It's the most important keyword and the entire content of the web page should discuss it at length.
It should be introduced as an article's file name, title, and of course, within the page's content. And it should be the first word of the first sentence of the first paragraph as well. This specific order is extremely important to your SEO efforts because search engines deem the first words of an article as the most important.
When a search engine indexes a web page, it's those first words that tell the search engine (1) what the web page is about and (2) what search queries that web page should respond to.
In no circumstances should web page of an article about electronic football games start with a company's title, software developer's name, or insignificant greeting. If this article began with a slick welcome message for example, its link wouldn't show up in the forefront of search engines the way that an article starting with the keyword phrases, "fantasy football" or "college football" would.
Secondary Keywords
A secondary keyword is the keyword or keyword-phrase that you'll use after the primary keyword or keyword-phrase and it immediately follows the primary keyword that you're working with in the list obtained from the Good Keywords program.
Secondary keywords aren't necessary, however when they're embedded into your web page, they increase the chance of attracting website visitors who use the next best keywords to search with.
Tertiary Keywords
Tertiary keywords are a group of keywords or keyword-phrases (usually no more than 10) that are used after the secondary keyword or keyword phrase. They too, increase the chance of attracting website visitors who use different keywords to search with.
These keywords are introduced behind the secondary keyword in a page's description and keyword metatags, and of course, throughout the page's content.
Keywords in Action
As an illustration, let's say that your website caters to joggers. Joggers would readily find your website if it hosted articles written with the following keywords:
* jogging * jogging running * jogging tip * benefit jogging * complete guide idiot jogging running * jogging woman * burned calorie jogging * jogging lose weight * jogging loss weight * begin jogging * beginner jogging * calorie jogging * jogging program * exercise jogging * jogging technique * beginning jogging
Using these keywords as an example, the subject of your first SEO article would be about jogging. It's primary keyword would be: "jogging", the secondary keyword would be: "jogging running," and the tertiary keywords would be: "jogging tip, benefit jogging, complete guide idiot jogging running, jogging woman, burned calorie jogging, jogging lose weight, jogging loss weight, begin jogging, beginner jogging, calorie jogging."
The primary keyword of a second article about the subject would focus on " jogging running." Its secondary keyword would be "jogging tip," and its tertiary keywords would be "benefit jogging, complete guide idiot jogging running, jogging woman, burned calorie jogging, jogging lose weight, jogging loss weight, begin jogging, beginner jogging, calorie jogging, jogging program."
The position of these keywords in articles changes (shifts) as you move down the list of available search terms. And maintaining this order in your articles is extremely important so that you attract the attention of the people who use these keywords.
Why?
The above example keywords were obtained with the "Good Keywords" program, and this particular software retrieves keywords in an order that dictates popularity.
In our sample list, the keyword-phrase, "jogging woman" appears before "beginning jogging" because its more popular - meaning that "jogging woman" is used to search the internet much more than the "beginning jogging" keyword-phrase is used. By maintaining this same order in your articles, you'll increase your chances of attracting the widest audience of Internet searchers at one time.
In other words, an article focusing on a keyword or keyword-phrase that's used 90% of the time could be read by a higher percentage of people than say, an article focusing on a keyword that's used 10% or 2% of the time.
In this instance, you want your website to respond to as many search engine queries at a time, which will consequently also bring in the most website traffic.
Keyword Density
At the time of this publication, an article - or webpage content - can be as short as 300 words while anything more than 600 words (in SEO Article Marketing) is thought to lose a reader's interest. The number of words in an article is extremely important, as it helps to determine a thing called keyword density.
Keyword Density Defined
Keyword density is the number of times that a keyword or keyword-phrase occurs within a page of content (not HTML tags) and again, at the time of this publication, a density from 1% - 5% seems to be acceptable.
You can calculate the keyword density within your article by dividing the number of times that each keyword or keyword-phrase occurs by the number of the total words in the entire article.
For example, a 300-word article that mentions a particular keyword 15 times has a keyword density of 5%. An article with a 1% - 5% keyword density resembles the natural flow of regular speech. But when that density is increased to 10% or 20%, the article becomes incomprehensible and 'spammy.'
Keyword Density in Action
Take a look at the following paragraph examples.
Example 1:
Jogging is an exercise that we all can enjoy as long as we take proper precautions. Unlike full-fledged marathon running, jogging is performed at a pace that we're comfortable with - not a pace that we're competing with. And we can make adjustments in our jogging pace, route, environment, etc. to reduce the risk of a heart attack caused by overzealous activity.
Example 2:
Jogging is a jogging exercise that we all can enjoy as long as we take the proper jogging precautions. Unlike full-fledged marathon running, jogging is performed at a jogging pace that we're comfortable with - not a jogging pace that we're competing with. We can make jogging adjustments in jogging pace, jogging routes, jogging environments, etc. to reduce the risk of a heart attack caused by strenuous jogging activity.
Example 1 contains a 4% keyword density and strongly resembles natural speech. Example 2 however, contains a 15% keyword density, however it strongly resembles spam.
Keyword Density Workarounds
To prevent spamdexing, yet continue to draw in traffic and achieve a high position in the search engines, you are encouraged to use more than one keyword or keyword-phrase in a single article as long as the use of each doesn't exceed the recommended density (1% - 5%).
You're also encouraged to use interjections or small prepositions to break up some of the keyword-phrases. For example, "benefit jogging" and "benefit, jogging."
This makes for easier reading, and it's A-OK in SEO Article Marketing because search engines generally ignore these kinds of words. Apostrophes, dashes, commas, and other punctuation marks don't generally disrupt the relevancy of a keyword pattern as well.
Importance of Robots.txt
Robots.txt file is a very important file if you want to have a good ranking on search engines, many websites don't offer this file. A Robots.txt file is helpful to keep out unwanted search engine spiders like email retrievers, image strippers, etc. It defines which paths are off limits for spiders to visit. This is useful if you want to hide some personal information or some secret files.
What is Robots.txt
Robots.txt file is a special text file that is always located in your Web server's root directory. Robots.txt file contains restrictions for Web Spiders, telling them where they have permission to search. A Robots.txt is like defining rules for search engine spiders (robots) what to follow and what not to. It should be noted that Web Robots are not required to respect Robots.txt files, but most well written Web Spiders follow the rules you define.
How to Create Robots.txt
The format for the robots.txt file is special. It consists of records. Each record consists of two fields : a User-agent line and one or more Disallow: lines. The format is:
The robots.txt file should be created in Unix line ender mode! Most good text editors will have a Unix mode or your FTP client *should* do the conversion for you. Do not attempt to use an HTML editor that does not specifically have a text mode to create a robots.txt file.
User-agent
The User-agent line specifies the robot. For example:
User-agent: googlebot
You may also use the wildcard character "*" to specify all robots:
User-agent: *
You can find user agent names in your own logs by checking for requests to robots.txt. Most major search engines have short names for their spiders.
Disallow
The second part of a record consists of Disallow: directive lines. These lines specify files and/or directories. For example, the following line instructs spiders that it can not download contactinfo.htm:
Disallow: contactinfo.htm
You may also specify directories:
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Which would block spiders from your cgi-bin directory.
There is a wildcard nature to the Disallow directive. The standard dictates that /bob would disallow /bob.html and /bob/indes.html (both the file bob and files in the bob directory will not be indexed).
If you leave the Disallow line blank, it indicates that ALL files may be retrieved. At least one disallow line must be present for each User-agent directive to be correct. A completely empty Robots.txt file is the same as if it were not present.
White Space & Comments
Any line in the robots.txt that begins with # is considered to be a comment only. The standard allows for comments at the end of directive lines, but this is really bad style:
Disallow: bob #comment
Some spider will not interpret the above line correctly and instead will attempt to disallow "bob#comment". The moral is to place comments on lines by themselves.
White space at the beginning of a line is allowed, but not recommended.
Disallow: bob #comment
Examples
The following allows all robots to visit all files because the wildcard "*" specifies all robots.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This one keeps all robots out.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The next one bars all robots from the cgi-bin and images directories:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
This one bans Roverdog from all files on the server:
User-agent: Roverdog
Disallow: /
This one bans keeps googlebot from getting at the personal.htm file:
User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: personal.htm
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most cost-effective methods of getting leads known to Internet business owners. It gives you instant traffic, and allows you to test your business model in real time.
At the same time, pay-per-click advertising (or PPC) is not as simple to use as the PPC companies will have you believe. If you jump into the system without preparing for 'tracking' your results, doing deep keyword research, establishing your ROI and most importantly, testing your ads, you'll lose a lot of money really fast.
The PPC Model
In the PPC advertising model, you have three core elements - keywords , ads , and bids . These three elements are combined with ' placement ' to create an advertising model that displays 'relevant' ads on search engines (in response to keyword searches), portals and websites that opt to display such ads on their pages (the ads to be shown are determined by a keyword analysis of the page).
For a PPC campaign, you need to know the keywords that you are targeting. For example, for a niche site that promotes a time management product, I would create a list of keywords that included keyword groups containing terms related to time management, productivity, saving time, self improvement and maybe even business soft skills. As I've told you before about keyword research, you should have a big list so that you capture most, if not all, of your target traffic.
The next step is to write the ad copy for the ads that will be displayed for your searches. The ad copy is extremely important because along with your bid amount, this will determine the 'conversion rate' (explained below) of your ads. Write concise, compelling ad copy that highlights the benefits of your website / product, and avoid fluff.
Once you've written your ads, it's time to bid . The bidding mechanism differs from PPC engine to engine, but the idea is the same - your bid amount is the maximum cost (usually calculated in U.S. dollars) that you are willing to pay for each keyword. It's important to know how much you can afford in terms of bidding costs so that you avoid going into bidding wars with your competitors, and also so that you don't spend more than you make through this campaign.
Cost-Per-Click
Cost-Per-Click ( CPC ) is the amount you pay each time a potential customer 'clicks' on one of your ads that they see on their search engine results or on websites. This is often less than the maximum bid amount you set for each keyword.
Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate is the ratio of clicks over impressions (the number of times your ad is displayed on searches or page loads on websites). A typical conversion rate is between 2 to 3 percent - that is, for every 100 impressions, you get 2-3 clicks on your ads.
Placement
If there is more than one person bidding for a keyword (as is almost always the case), the placement of the ads (which ad comes in on the first slot, which comes in on the second, etc.) is determined by bid amounts of each competitor. The higher your bid, the better your placement (Google adds the conversion rate into their placement calculations, and I'll tell you how later). Your conversion rate to a certain extent depends on how high your ad is placed on the 'rankings' and this leads advertisers to place high bids just to rank at the top. The trouble with this approach is that you might enter into a bidding war with your competitors and lose a lot of money.
Tracking
Tracking refers to measuring which keywords are bringing you the best leads or sales, and which keywords are bringing you 'window shoppers' - people who are 'compulsive clickers' and don't buy or sign up. Tracking your ad campaign will help you further fine-tune your ads and improve your ROI.
ROI
Your Return-on-Investment (ROI) is determined by how much you are spending over how much you are earning in net profits from your ad campaign. It's important to establish a base ROI before your start your ad campaign - assume a conversion rate of 1 percent - so that you don't over-spend and are able to run this campaign within your budget.
The Pay Per Click World
Currently, there are two major PPC engines, Google AdWords and Overture (now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing ). While there are many alternatives such as Espotting (now Miva), MetricsDirect and Kanoodle, the top two PPC engines are a class apart when it comes to delivering results.
However, one of the first pieces of advice you'll hear from most people is that bigger PPC engines such as AdWords and Overture are too 'expensive' to break into (with CPC for top positions easily passing $3-$4 for many keywords, and reaching $10 for really competitive keywords).
In reality, if you are just starting out, it's critical that you pick one of the top two PPC engines. Why?
Traditionally marketers judge PPC engines on the following criteria:
* Reach - How large your potential target market is.
* Cost-per-click
* Quality of traffic - Do the leads fit your customer profile? Are the willing to spend on your products?
* Quality of service - The tools and help offered by the PPC engines.
Overture and AdWords beat their competition on all of these metrics except CPC. However, the benefits of 'cheaper' clicks are more than compensated for by the ease of use of the big two, and more importantly, as any PPC expert will tell you, the quality of traffic from Overture and AdWords is far better than from other PPC engines.
Overture
Overture was purchased by Yahoo!, and recently renamed to Yahoo! Search Marketing. The name's not catchy, but with Yahoo! Behind the 'second-largest' PPC engine on the Internet, you can expect that the quality of traffic and services will improve over the next year. Yahoo's acquisition of Overture is the single biggest reason advertisers have started paying attention to Overture again, although Google AdWords still commands leading respect.
Overture is a manually edited PPC engine. When you write ads for your website, these ads (and the keywords you specify) have to be approved by human editors before they can appear in search results on Overture partner websites. While this ensures that the quality of ads remains above a certain level, this is also a hassle, as new ad campaigns can take several days to be approved, and there is a distinct lag between the time you plan to improve a section of your campaign (for testing) and the time those changes actually go live.
Overture keyword bids are totally transparent, meaning that any advertiser can see at any time what other advertisers are paying for that particular keyword. This is both useful and harmful - advertisers can accurately target their 'ad placement' positions, but knowledge of the top 2 or top 3 bid amounts can easily lead into a bidding war, and competitors undercutting your ads by posting a bid that is $0.01 higher than yours.
Google Adwords
Google AdWords is the leading PPC engine on the Internet, although it's closely followed by Overture. Combined, the two PPC networks are distributed on nearly every search engine or portal.
Google is totally automated - your ads go live within minutes of being written. This is one of the two significant advantages AdWords has over its competition - no need to wait for 'approval' of your keywords and ads, which can take a few days on other PPC engines.
Google AdWords, like Overture, does not charge you your maximum bid amount, but just one cent more than the bid lower than yours. On the other hand, AdWords bids are not transparent like Overture - bidders have no idea what their competition is bidding. This reduces the threat of bidding wars.
The second advantage of AdWords is that it includes conversion rate calculations in its ad-ranking algorithm. Simply put, your ad may rank higher than your competitors' even if you are bidding lower, just because you have a higher conversion rate. AdWords rewards ads that are better written, and thus provides a subtle barrier against ad spam.
PPC advertising has become the ultimate marketing tool for testing new ad campaigns, business models and landing pages without spending too much money. Where else can you test a sales page by sending it 100 leads for $5?
If you are looking to promote your website / product effectively but cannot wait for your search engine rankings to show on Google or Yahoo, you should seriously consider PPC advertising as an advertising tool that not only brings in instant traffic (and sales), but is a hedge against ranking fluctuations by ensuring that you stay on the top page for your target keywords.
This is just a general overview of Pay Per Click marketing/strategies. Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon, where I'll go into some much more advanced techniques to really ramp up your traffic, all the while spending less money!
Importance of Sitemap
Do you own a website? If so, then take a minute to imagine the following scenario:
You've uploaded your last set of pages to your website, and you have finally setup your new income stream, fitted with your choice of products, payment gateway and hundreds of pages of content designed to increase your search engine rankings and hopefully give you some AdSense income.
You now focus your attention towards link-building and other traffic building techniques, and pretty soon you've got search engine spiders crawling through your website.
Have you built a sitemap?
Yes, of course.
But have you built a sitemap that is:
* Tailored to get your complete website indexed almost instantly.
* Guaranteed to improve your site rankings.
* Compliant with the new Google Sitemap format.
No? That's what I thought
However, no need to worry. I've got the perfect plan for you to prepare a sitemap that will not only guarantee website indexing and ranking almost instantly, but also tell you how to build a sitemap that complies with Google's new Sitemap feature, thus further improving search engine indexing of your website.
The Perfect Sitemap
Building a perfect sitemap is a lot like building a perfect website - you need to account for contextual grouping of your pages, hierarchical linking between your pages, and most importantly, a clean, concise format that provides search engine spiders with a super-fast blueprint for indexing your website.
So how do you go about making a perfect sitemap?
First, let's revisit the philosophy behind sitemaps. Webmasters traditionally used sitemaps to provide a 'guide to all pages on this site' in the shape of a sitemap - if a visitor is lost, or wants to browse through your website to look for information they are interested in, they would use a sitemap.
That's great. In fact, sitemaps can be very useful to help users navigate through your website.
But isn't your menu structure (or whatever navigational theme you have placed on your website) supposed to do that?
The sitemap is a backup - a failsafe that is activated if your first line of help - The navigational structure of your website, doesn't help your visitors.
Now I've always said that the most important factor in creating a successful user experience is to build a foolproof menu system, and to organize pages on your website logically and intuitively so that anyone can find what they are looking for within just a few clicks. If you did all that, would your users really need a sitemap? Not likely.
On the other hand, a sitemap can be extremely useful to help search engines index your website completely. In a typical scenario, when a search engine spider will visit your site for the first time it might fully index your website, but it will take a look at all the links to your main page.
Now if one of those links points to your sitemap, then the next time the search engine spider returns to look for more web content and crawls those links, it will definitely index your site map and subsequently, gain access to all of your pages.
Remember... A site map does not guarantee indexing of your web site; on the other hand, it ensures that if you have done your SEO right (consistent link-building and targeted web pages), a search engine spider will be more likely to index the whole website instead of doing it partially - in fact with the right format, you can almost 'hypnotize' the spider into doing a complete crawl. This is assuming of course, that the spider finds your website important enough in the first place to have a look - something that can only happen through a persistent link-building campaign.
When creating your sitemap, keep the following points in mind:
* Create simple, clean HTML code.
* Organize your website's content into contextual categories - make simple lists and don't worry about ordering.
* Ensure that your site map reflects the structure of your website - i.e., the category headings on your website should be the top level category pages on your website. This also means that you should build a sitemap at the same time that you are planning your website's structure and content.
* Look at sitemaps of leading websites for an insight on how to organize your links - the DevShed Sitemap is a great example.
* While a sitemap's main purpose is to organize all pages of your website neatly on a single page, it will be helpful to include a line or two describing the link - sort of like a links page, only that this is for internal links, and not for outside links. This will help users understand what the pages are about, and keywords in these descriptions will help with search engine algorithms which are starting to account for text surrounding the links as well.
Google Sitemap
Google has recently released a Sitemap Protocol, which will be used to 'supplement' the regular crawling process of GoogleBot, Google's search engine spider. While the technical details of generating and maintaining a Google compliant sitemap involve some serious head-scratching, here's a summary of what placing such a sitemap will do for your website.
The Google Sitemap (GS) will contain usual information such as a list of URLs, plus additional information about these URLs, such as when they were last modified (content freshness), how frequently they are changed (content "refresh rate") and the importance of a particular URL in relation to other URLs in the GS. Other tags, or pieces of information, are expected to be added in future updates.
The GS Protocol requires that your GS is in XML format. This allows you to store information about each link in a format that search engine spiders can reliably interpret and manipulate. Don't let this scare you. I'll be sending you a video showing how to use a special, free, software program to create a Google sitemap for you :-)
There are other concerns, such as the limit on the size of a sitemap, support for multiple sitemaps and placement of the sitemap on your website, which are discussed on the Google Sitemap page. From a webmaster's point of view, it's important to note the benefits that such a sitemap might have on search engine spider behavior regarding your website.
The central aim of the GS project is to allow webmasters to tell the search engines the importance of their pages, and about how frequently they plan to update their websites. Like all search engine technology, this is open to abuse but it is also a powerful tool for new websites to help with rapid search engine indexing.
By telling the search engine spiders exactly which pages are most important, and which pages are most like to have regularly updated fresh content, you can simplify their job and will eventually be rewarded with more "intelligent" crawling - ensuring that your most important pages get indexed rapidly after they are updated by you.
Once you've created your Google Sitemap (either through the Google Sitemap Generator or a 'simpler' tool such as Site Map Pro) and placed it on your website, you can submit your sitemap to Google. This page not only helps you manage your Google sitemaps, but also shows you when Google accesses them.
Sitemap Professional
If you have a small website, manually editing your site map may not be a problem. Heck, if you are a programmer, you can even work with Google's Sitemap Generator and generate your very own Google Sitemaps. But if you have a large website, or several websites, and if like me you don't want to waste your time dabbling with code (i.e. you want to stick to what you know best, which is running a successful online business), you need an automated site map generator.
But you don't need just *any* sitemap tool. To be effective, a sitemap generator must have the following:
* Ability to group your pages into themed categories.
* Support of templates so that you can map your site structure onto your sitemap.
* Runs from your desktop - easier to use than having to run a script from your website.
* And of course - generates a Google Sitemap.
Site Map Pro is one of the few tools I'm aware of that does all this (and then some) in a fraction of the time it would take you to create the sitemap yourself. If you factor in the savings in time over the period of a year (when you are busy putting up and maintaining several large websites), the cost of such a tool is just a drop in the ocean.
And as an added bonus, the tool will also generate a Google Sitemap for you. There is absolutely no knowledge of programming required; it's custom made for online business owners like you and me who don't have the time or patience to learn complex programming and technical details. If you're tight on your budget and need a Google sitemap created, don't buy this software for that purpose alone. I'll be showing you a good, free, Google sitemap generator in a coming lesson.
In the end, if you do your job of designing your website right, your users wouldn't need a sitemap. On the other hand, search engines have increased their interest in sitemaps as a reliable option to learn more about your website. With a properly configured sitemap and a Google sitemap on your website, you'll be miles ahead of your competition once the results of this cooperation with search engine spiders start to kick in.
How to increase your Website Traffic?
This question is so common though, here SEO Material briefly describe some common way to increase your website traffic.Reciprocal Linking
Many people focus on linking in order to improve their search engine rankings. That’s important but don’t forget that the links themselves can be one of your biggest sources of traffic!
Probably the easiest way to invite links (apart from searching out related sites and writing to each one) is to add a “link” section to your pages where webmasters can choose a banner, button or text link to place on their site. On the same page, they can also submit their own site for linking. That should help you swap links without being swamped by sites looking for free placement.
The most critical factor when requesting a link though is where the site places it. Links on the home page always do better than a link buried on one of the internal pages and a good banner or graphic link on a site with content related to yours will usually get more clicks than a text link.
If you find that your links aren’t appearing on the pages you want, there are a couple of simple remedies that you can use.
The first is to ask for a better position! If you have a good relationship with the webmaster or if it’s a small site, there’s a good chance that they’ll agree. It certainly won’t hurt to ask.
Not everyone is so generous though, and another option is to offer something in return. A link in a similar position on your own site can make a good deal if your sites are of similar size but you can also offer content or even a special page for that site’s users.
If you have a site about furniture for example, and you want a link at a top directory for home furnishings then you could create a special welcome page for users of that site to draw them deeper into yours and deliver targeted ads. You might even want to go as far as creating a sort of co-branded version of your site for their users to click into. As long as you’re getting paid when the users click on the ads, what do you care whose design they’re looking at?
Send A Friend
There’s nothing like viral marketing to promote your site! It’s free, it comes with trusted recommendations and it gives you great CTR.
Each of your content pages should have a link marked “Send a friend” which opens a form so that the user can send your URL onwards. Until Google allow ads in email, there’s little point in AdSense members sending actual content but there’s no reason why you (or your users) can’t send links to pages with ads.
Promoting Your Blog
If you’ve got AdSense on your blog, there’s a whole range of different things that you can easily do to increase your traffic and earn extra cash.
The first thing you should do is make sure that your blog is set to ping rpc.pingomatic.com as soon you’ve updated. Pingomatic.com offers a free all-in-one pinging service that covers all the large blog directories and search engines. On Blogger.com, you can find this in your settings; other blog tools, such as Movable Type and Wordpress have a similar option.
You should also set up an RSS feed to let people know when you update. Apart from the fact that you can now place ads on your feeds, it will also keep your regular users coming back to see more ads (and to see your latest posts).
Instead of linking to the previous month’s or the previous week’s posts, each page should also have its own link. Sounds obvious, right? And yet how many blogs have you seen with one link to about twenty different entries? One link per entry means more pages for ads, better links from external sites and higher search engine rankings.
You should certainly comment on other people’s blogs, especially those that write about the same sort of things as your site, but ultimately the best way to get traffic to your blog is to make it good. If your writing is dull or difficult to read, it doesn’t matter how hard you push it, no one will want to read it — and those who do stay won’t stick around to click the ads.
Offline Marketing
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they build an Internet business is to forget that there’s a world outside the Internet! Just because you make money out of traffic doesn’t mean you have to source all of that traffic online.
You should make sure that your URL is listed on all of your marketing material: your business cards, Yellow Pages ads, flyers, envelopes, freebies and just about anything else you can think of. You should certainly have your site address in your email signatures.
Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature
This is a no-brainer that is sometimes overlooked. Make sure that all reprints of cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company's URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the http:// part and including only the www.domain.com portion.
Develop a Free Service
It's boring to invite people, "Come to our site and learn about our business." It's quite another to say "Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site." Make no mistake, it's expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, such as Website Marketing Info Center (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/), but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site. Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales part of your site.
Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters
You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters, realizing that most articles will end up being archived on their websites indefinitely. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.
Install a "Signature" in your E-Mail Program
This helps potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs such as AOL, Netscape, and Outlook allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.
Publish an E-Mail Newsletter
While it's a big commitment in time, publishing a monthly e-mail newsletter ("ezine") is one of the very best ways to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site but aren't yet ready to make a purchase. Ask for an e-mail address and first name so you can personalize the newsletter.
Promote using traditional media
Don't discontinue print advertising that you've found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers' attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.
Exchange Ads with Complementary Businesses
Banner exchange programs don't work well these days. But consider exchanging e-mail newsletter ads with complementary businesses to reach new audiences. Just be sure that your partners are careful where they get their mailing list or you could be in trouble with the CAN-SPAM Act.
Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site
It seems so simple, but make sure you ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. (www.seomaterial.com) This substantially increases their chances of returning.
You should also read our Website Promotion article to increase more traffic.
