Category Archives: Positive SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the higher a site’s “page rank” (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Top 4 Ways to Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

Posted on by
11

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell
you – the time has come to face your website!

A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few
simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

1. Title Bar

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on
your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and
phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title
bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

2. Website Content

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The
text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in
order to increase your search engine rankings.

3. Meta Tags

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags
are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags
in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a
window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta
name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any
little boost helps.

4. Link Popularity

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings,
consider launching a link popularity campaign.

Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking
some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic Starting Yesterday

Posted on by
2

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Be Creative and Stay Visible – Legitimately Build Link Popularity

Posted on by
Reply

A great way to legitimately build link popularity for your sites is to build a stand alone directory or search engine. You can find programs for this at The CGI Resource Index and the PHP Resource Index. After you’ve created one, add to it your own sites, your affiliate sites, your sites that are affiliates for others, etc. You can also create a stand-alone themed search engine and put on it a link to your own site.

Another way is by offering “awards” in the form of a .GIF image that links back to your site. If you’ve developed a reputation of being an authority on a subject or niche, people will perceive a benefit from the awards you offer (e.g., he/she gets to tell everybody that your site recognizes his site as a quality site) and this will encourage them to place your award on their site. When giving awards, just like in sending links requests, always make it a point to provide the awardees the code for the award to make it easy for the awardees to put the award on their site.

Still on awards, if you don’t have what it takes to be the giver of awards, strive to become the awardee and submit your site to as many awards sites on the Web as you can and as appropriate.

Instead of joining a banner exchange program, start one of your own. The basic concept behind this kind of service is that people will sign up with your site agreeing that they will add special links to your site and allowing you to display banner ads on their pages. In exchange, you agree to display their banners on your site and on all other sites within your banner exchange network.

Never say no to an interview, especially for an article on your related field. It is very likely that, in introducing you, interviewers/writers will list your qualifications with a link back to your site. This will add visibility and credibility to you, your site, and your online business. Likewise, if you’ve been asked by an established and respected writer to contribute to an article he/she is working on, ALWAYS say YES. This can get you published in a lot of places that you otherwise could not.

Look for good quality sites that offer “free” Web space, particularly those that are indexed by search engines, and create a small site (about 3 to 5 pages) on them with the same subject as your own site. Link that small site back to your main site and submit your small site to the search engines for indexing. This should get you some creadit for link relevance.

If you offer contests or sweepstakes on your site, you shouldn’t have much of a problem in getting free links from the numerous contest and sweepstakes directories on the web.

Give discounts or any kind of special offer to anyone who agrees to post an image (perhaps a .GIF that links to your site) on their site. Also, give discounts/special offers to those who go through that link. This will surely increase your link’s popularity.

If you’re regularly giving away free stuff on your site, try getting your site listed on sites/dirctories that list sites that give stuff away like The Free Site.

If you have a members-only site, offer site owners (most especially those who might have great interests on your site or its content) free membership in exchange for a link to your site. If you have a discussion board or forum, invite related sites to link to it.

Create/host a “Top Site” which ranks sites based on the amount of incoming traffic they send. Top Site programs can be found on and downloaded from The PHP Resource Index and the CGI Resource Index.

 Include a provision in your contracts with your business partners (resellers, partners, subcontractors, and vendors) that requires them to link to your site. Additionally, also indicate that your link must be placed on a page that is accessible to search engine crawlers. Note that most search engines index only content in the top two levels of a site.

If you have bought a product online, or bought a product of someone who has a web site, write them a testimonial (focus on the positive points), include your web site’s URL in it, and email the owner of the web site and tell him/her that you would be happy to let him/her use your testimonial on his/her site.

If you have some newsworthy thing going on at your company/business–landing a big new contract maybe, or your engagement/particpation at a prestigious conference, or launching of a new product–draft a brief press release and send it to all relevant newspapers, to the attention of the Business Editor. You can find the contact information of the newspapers in your region and/or industry at Gebbie Press.

Write letters to newspaper editors, maybe to comment on an article or something, just be careful not to say anything nasty or controversial. Since most newspapers nowadays are mirrored online, one of your letters mught just end up on their site.

You could provide special offers to members of professional organizations, such as your local Chamber of Commerce, and try to get your site’s link up on their site.

Contact your local radio and television stations and offer your expertise to them. You might just be able to get your link on their programs as well as on their website.

Put your URL on your stationeries, business cards, offline advertising materials/campaigns, invoices, T-shirts, promotional items, and whatever else you can think of.

Try getting your link on the web sites of colleges and universities. Some colleges/universities may have services or courses that relate to your business’ service. If you offer to do something free for them, perhaps a seminar or giving away free gifts to students, you may be able to get your link on that university’s site. One thing that Google and other search engines love is old domain names, especially those that indicate some kind of charitable or educational status. If you can get a link from that kind of a domain name, your site will have a very good chance at ranking well in the SERPs.

Getting People To Link To You Even Without Asking Them To

Posted on by
2
  • Give people reasons to link to you.
  • Provide original valuable content and useful resources on your site.
  • Create useful/insightful lists. “Top 10 whatever”, “10 easy tips to achieving whatever”, those types of lists. People love them and many can’t resist linking to them.
  • Develop authority in your chosen niche/subject.
  • Provide a privacy policy and “about” section on your site to make it look trustworthy.
  • Make your content easily understood by most people. Minimize grammatical and spelling errors while you’re at it.
  • Buy relevant traffic through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns or through intermediary sites like buysellads.com. You might just get some visitors who will link to you at the end of the day.
  • Submit articles to article directories such as Ezinearticles or GoArticles. Include your link in your signature.
  • Submit articles to industry news sites. Include your link in your signature.
  • Find out the hottest topics of the moment and post original articles on it on your site.
  • Make a compelling and newsworthy press release and email it to journalists and bloggers, as well as press release sites like PRweb and PRLeap.
  • Keep track of those who pick up your articles and press releases and offer them exclusive content.
  • Trade articles with other webmasters/sites.
  • Ask people to provide feedback on your articles/news and to reference to it if they find the information useful.
  • Do surveys and studies that make people feel important, you’d be surprised by the amount of links you’ll get.
  • Submit your site to online directories which offer free submissions
  • Submit your site to high quality paid directories.
  • Get people to tag your site on Delicious and other social bookmarking sites.
  • Depending on your offerings, Craigslist can be a cheap/free classified service.
  • Post questions or answers on Yahoo Answers and Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.
  • Create a topical Squidoo page and link to expert documents and useful tools in your field. Also include a link to your site.
  • Always remember to include your site’s link in your signature files.

Alternative Link Building Strategy

Posted on by
Reply

Step 1 – Create a links/resources page on your site and fill it with at least 50 sites that are related to yours or your niche (avoid ones that are in competition with you).

Scout for sites by doing searches on search engines using your keywords. (Note: Pick out only the first few top results.)

Step 2 – Find out and list down the sites that are linking to those in your list. Do the same for your competitor’s sites. Look for quality content and non-competitiveness. If they pass those criterion, include them in your links/resources page. Also, take note of the webmaster’s email address.

Step 3 – Get in touch with the Webmasters of the sites you have on your final list and request for a link.

Get Something That Your Competitors Can’t

Both you and your competitor may be offering the same products and services, and you’re probably both employing the same business models, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the same in all aspects of your business.

Considering that most directories are “free-for-all” as far as getting listed is concerned, directory submission is really more of a game of chance rather than a strategic move. Or, is it?

What if I tell you that there’s actually something you can do that will give you an edge over your competitors?

Think of something that makes you and/or your business different from your competitors, think of something that sets you apart. Have you come up with anything yet? If you have, then good, you’re about to learn how to use it to your advantage… to get links that your competitors cannot.

If you’re among those who have made a commitment to do something for the good of the planet and its inhabitants, you can go to Ethical Duck and get your site listed there. Ethical Duck calls itself a “Directory of Ethical Products and Services” which lists websites that are considered “in some way are of a positive value to humans, the environment, the planet.” Considering that your competitors have not yet gone “green”, you’ve just gotten one link that they will not be able to get.

It’s not only Ethical Duck, mind you. Any quality directory that editorially discriminates on your niche/location and other factors lets you do exactly that, that is to give you something that your competitors may not be able to get.

Another thing that can get you links that your competitors may not be able to is by producing great content and doing it better than your competitors.

Yet another thing is by buying a domain that matches your keywords/phrases. Unfortunately, this one comes down to who has a better budget and moves faster. If you have both then good for you.

12 Solid Link Building Tips

Posted on by
Reply
  1. Start a blog. Fill it up with valuable content and link to other blogs from it. To get people’s attention, leave useful, insightful, and relevant comments on other people’s blog. This may eventually lead other bloggers/people to start reading your blog and/or linking to it. Also make sure to list it in a few of the best blog directories.
  2. If you’re a respected source of information or expertise in the industry, get your materials online and use them to attract and obtain links to your site.
  3. If you’re buying your products from a number of sources (particularly those who have web sites), try to get your sources to link to you. One way to do this is by offering them a genuine testimonial or an end-user feedback (with your link in it, of course).
  4. If you have higher profit margins than your competitors, give away some free stuff.
  5. If you’re requesting links from bloggers and site owners, give them one of your cheaper items along with your link request. This could significantly increase your chance of receiving a positive response.
  6. If you have great salespeople, treat them out to lunch, and teach them about SEO and link building. These people have what it takes to call people up and get the response they (or, in this case, YOU) want.
  7. If you have lots of staff who are not fully occupied, have them do some of the things you want done which you don’t have the time for. Have them email the webmaster of every rambling society in the country or find out the top 100 Dugg pages in your niche.
  8. If your site or products have won awards, post all the links related to your award(s) on your site.
  9. If you have a PR team, no matter if they’re only good at getting you in the offline press, challenge them to get you into some large online-outlets. Remember, the reason why you got them in the first place is because they are great at getting you talked about. What do you know, they might just do as good online.
  10. Focus on real traffic/people. Build links for them and not for search engines. If you keep people coming to your site, the search engines will surely take notice of that.
  11. Use a combination of hub and authority to factor link popularity into your site’s ranking algorithm. Simply put, a hub is a site with many outgoing links, while an authority is a site with many incoming links.
  12. Create a list of experts/gurus in your chosen niche/field on your site. If you can find a way to make your project look somewhat official, or if you can impress those experts/gurus well enough, they might end up linking to your site.

Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Your Website

Posted on by
16

Search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to position your website in the higher positions of Google and other search engines. This means your website will receive larger and larger volumes of targeted traffic. It’s the biggest traffic driver to websites and the most successful online strategy when it comes to increasing online sales..

Unfortunately, some people don’t know how SEO (search engine optimization) works and what they can expect. Some webmasters still expect that their website will be listed on Google’s first result page after submitting the site to Google. That might have worked eight years ago but it does not work today.

1. SEO takes time

You cannot optimize your website today and expect results tomorrow or next week. Search engine optimization takes time. Search engines have to find your new optimized pages, they have to find the new links to your website, they have to update the index, etc. Of course there are other search engines and the principle works the same for Bing & Yahoo

2. You must change your web pages

If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords, then these keywords must appear on your web pages. It is possible to get high rankings for a keyword that is not listed on your website if lots of other websites link to your website with that keyword. That’s the exception, though.

In general, the keywords for which you want to be found must appear on your web pages and they must appear in the right elements on your web pages. For that reason, you have to change the HTML code of your web pages to make it as easy as possible for search engine spiders to parse your site.

3. You need links and you need the right links

Good backlinks are the key to high rankings on Google. Automatically created backlinks usually won’t help your rankings and they even might get you banned from Google’s index. As a general rule, the easier it is to get a link, the less is its influence on the position of your website on Google. The links to your website should be from related websites and they should contain your keywords in the link text.

The more attractive your website is, the easier it will be to get good links. Your website should offer link worthy content that other people can talk about.

4. It’s crucial to choose the right keywords

If you optimize the website of a rock band than you might think that it would be cool if their site was found for the keyword “mp3″. That might be cool but it does not make sense.

People searching for “mp3″ can be interested in anything: mp3 players, mp3 decoders, the latest Justin Bieber song, general information about the file format, etc. If these people come to your rock band website, they won’t find the information they are looking for.

Optimize your website for keywords that attract the right kind of people. For example “unsigned rock band” or “rock band London”.

5. You must be realistic

Getting on the first result page for a highly competitive keyword such as “mp3″ is possible but your competitors will be old and established websites with a lot of backlinks. It is very difficult to outrank these pages.If you have a website with just a few pages and your competitors have large websites with forums, communities, blogs, etc. then you must improve your website if you want to compete. Search engines want to show the best sites on the result pages.

If you absolutely want to get high rankings for a term such as “mp3″, start with less competitive keywords and then proceed to the more competitive terms. Search engines must trust your website before they give you high rankings for very competitive keywords that you have not used before.

6. You must set the right goals

Search engine optimization is not about getting a high Google PageRank (the green bar in Google’s toolbar). It is about getting high listings for the right keywords so that the right people will come to your website. The goal of search engine optimization is to increase your sales.You don’t have to be listed for any possible keyword even if they are related to your business. You have to be listed for keywords that will bring buyers to your site. It usually takes some time to find the best keywords for your website. Running Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads in conjunction with SEO and tracking conversions will help you to find the best keywords.

Maybe they lied to BOTH of us?

Posted on by
1

I had a website that was a work of art, and a product that was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was
so sure I was going to make a ton of bucks that I even went out and bought a new wheelbarrow to haul all my
loot to the bank. But after two months I didn’t have a single sale. Not ONE!

And I’ll bet a shiny new nickel that this is what YOU’RE going through today.

Y’see, one of the things all the Internet gurus DON’T tell us is that even the best product in the world and
the best website in the world ain’t gonna make us a penny, unless

we get HITS to our website. LOTS of hits!

Get 3 Backlinks on High PR Websites

Posted on by
2

Getting good backlinks to your website will help to increase the overall search engine rank of your website. There are lots of well known ways to get backlinks, including article marketing, directory submission and link exchange, but this task focuses on getting backlinks from websites that have a high page rank.

Benefit – If you complete the following steps you will have 3 brand new backlinks to your site from high page rank websites.

Step by Step Instructions

  1. Get a backlink from eHow.com (PR7). EHow is a popular website that teaches people how to do things. There are lots of categories including business, pets, home & finance, entertaining and more.
    • Visit eHow.com and click the “Join Now” button on the top right
    • Fill in the form and click “Register Now”
    • Login using your username and password and click “Edit Profile”
    • Fill in as many details as you want to but make sure that you put your website URL in the “Web Site” box and also write a sentence or two in the “About Me Box”
    • When you fill in the “About Me” box include your website URL with your keywords in the anchor text
      e.g. My name is YOUR NAME and I live in YOUR COUNTRY. I am the owner of <a href=”http://www.cyberzoo.co.za”>Internet Business Tips</a>.
    • Click the “Save Changes” button and check everything looks ok by clicking the “see my public profile” button.
  2. Get a backlink from Blogger.com (PR8). Blogger is a popular blogging website owned by Google. This part of the task does not involve setting up a blog, it is simply a way to get a backlink.
    • If you don’t already have a Google account create one here.
    • Login to Blogger.com with your Google account
    • Click on “Edit Profile”
    • There is a space to add our website but this is a nofollow link (not counted as a backlink). BUT, if you edit the “About Me” section you can add your website and anchor text and get a backlink.
      e.g. My name is YOUR NAME and I live in YOUR COUNTRY. I am the owner of <a href=”http://www.cyberzoo.co.za”>Internet Business Tips</a>.
    • Click on “Save Profile”
  3. Get a backlink from StatCounter.com (PR8) – statcounter is a popular website tracking tool. In this method we are going to get a backlink from the statcounter forum.
    • Visit the Statcounter Forum and register
    • Login and click on your username, then click on “user cpanel“ and then on “edit your details”
    • Enter your website URL in the “Your Home Page” box
    • Scroll down and click “Save Changes”
    • If you can make a post in the statcounter forum as well this will help to get your profile page indexed more quickly, but you do not have to do this. If you do, make sure that your post is useful and either respond to someone’s comment or ask a question related to statcounter.

Additional Information

If you are not sure what is meant by page rank read What is Google Page Rank?.
In most of these examples your profile will be created on a new page which will have a page rank of zero, BUT, because these sites are very popular and have high page ranks, over time your link on that page will be a very high quality backlink.

Back to Table of Contents for:
Get Website Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less

or go to next traffic tip in the series:
Use Twitter to Get More Traffic

Top 10 Reasons Why Every Small Business Website Should Be Built with WordPress

Posted on by
2

I’ll tell you the same thing I tell every one of my new web marketing clients, “WordPress is incredible – and you should be using it for your website.” It can save you both time and money, while making it far easier to build a beautiful and limitless website that you can manage and control yourself.

Once you learn more about WordPress, you’ll understand why over 80 MILLION websites are built on WordPress, and why now is the time for you to learn what WordPress is all about, and how it can provide immense value to your small business.

Here are my Top 10 Reasons for why you should strongly consider WordPress for your website:

1. Incredible Power Straight Out of the Box

Immediately upon installing WordPress, you’ll have power features that make it easy to manage your website. You’ll have a Content Management System that allows you to add/edit/delete your content, including images and videos, a User Access system that controls who can access your Admin Center and what level of access they have, powerful Blogging software, and a central location to manage virtually all aspects of your website.

2. Quickly Build Beautiful Websites with Existing Themes

Forget spending $1,000′s on a custom website design when there are hundreds of highly professional themes for under $100. Simply find the theme that projects the right image for your business, install it in WordPress, and badda-bing, your new website has a top-quality look and feel to it. Any aspect of any theme can also be customized to suit your needs.

3. Add Powerful Features with Thousands of Plugins

Forget spending $1,000′s on custom website features when there are thousands of Plugins that can easily be installed and utilized instantly. Need a Calendar, there are plugins for that. A shopping cart? A Contact Us form? An Image Gallery? Yep. If it’s a common feature, chances are you can find a plugin to use and most of them for free. If not, you can have custom features developed.

4. It’s Completely Open Source

Is WordPress starting to sound like a website builder that you can buy for $5/month? In some ways it is, but here is where the similarities stop. WordPress is 100% Open Source and is written in an industry standard web-programming language. This means that your designer/developer is able to work directly in the code of the software to make ANY changes to the system and your website.

For instance, you may have a theme in mind, but the colors don’t match your logo. Your designer can easily go into the code of the system and change the colors, or the layout, or the images used, or anything. Perhaps you are using a Plugin, but it lacks an option that you’d really like to have. No problem, your developer can adapt it for you to any specification. With WordPress, anything is possible.

5. Focus on Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress gives you a big head start in the SEO race by providing the core features for you to implement your keyword strategy. You can use search-engine friendly URL’s, edit the META tags for each page and include Header Tags and Alt Tags directly in the Content Management System. In addition, most theme designers take SEO very seriously and code their themes to strict SEO best practices.

6. Constant Development and Enhancement

Technology is progressing faster and faster, and WordPress more than keeps up. New versions are constantly being developed and released to take advantage of new technologies, to enhance existing features and security and to develop new, cutting-edge features that make managing your website easier.

7. A Strong and Active Community

In addition to the team that develops the core of WordPress, there are millions of active WordPress users that can help you in many ways. These users develop new plugins, new themes, provide professional services and happily answer questions for you in WordPress forums worldwide.

8. Keep Your Website Safe and Secure

You invest a lot of time and resources in your website and you need to know it’s safe and secure. In addition to security being hardened in every release, there are also tools that make it easy to keep backups of all your website files and data, allowing you to restore your website in the worse of circumstances.

9. Not Outgrowing Your Website

Your data, settings, and design files are completely separate from the core of WordPress. This makes it easy to upgrade any area of your site – whenever you want. And, since it’s open source, you can build features as complex as necessary. Once you build your website with WordPress, you’ll be able to grow your website to keep pace with your business, no matter how big your business grows.

10. It’s Free

Perhaps best of all, WordPress is completely free. Zip, zilch, nada. Just download it, install it on your server and start using it – without spending a dime on the software.

I hope this article has helped you get an idea of how powerful and valuable WordPress can be to your business. It will take some time and effort on your part to really understand how it works and operates, but it will be extremely well worth the effort in the long run.

About The Author
Philip Light is the founder of the WordPress WebKit, a collection of WordPress Video Tutorials, Resources, and Support Options, making it quick and easy to learn and use WordPress for your blog or website.

Running Google Analytics on your Website and Seeing Improvements – Not a Secret anymore please!

Posted on by
Reply

For the love of the internet and for the want of a better internet experience, lets not keep Google Analytics a secret only known to Internet Geeks and the likes.

One of many good things about installing Google Analytics on your website and looking at the results once in a while, you are able to get a fairly good idea if your site content is working or not. With analytics you are able to compare for example this month to the previous month. Visitors went up, pageviews more than doubled, average time on site improved with a couple of seconds but oh no, bounce rates also went up!

All this just from the dashboard view before you start drilling down. Suppose it’s a very encouraging tool to work with if you are seeing positive SEO results but a nervous pessimistic tool if the opposite happens.

For the average website owner having access to this type of information could only but improve the entire world wide web. Imagine website owners actually being able to learn why some pages on their website attract more visitors than other pages.

All your hard work creating a new product page but the keywords are not being targeted or you are getting visitors from the wrong country.

This post is basically a notice to all website owners, small, media and large to demand this type of view of your website or pay a professional SEO company to manage it for you, but at least know of it, what data you are able to gather about your website and how to react on the results.

For a better WWW experience spend some time and effort with Analytics, after all it’s a free service offered by Google Analytics Official Website

Right SEO tactic for low and high competition

Posted on by
Reply

Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition.

The effect of different SEO tactics on the position of your website in the search results

If you target long keyword phrases with little competition, then the relative value of on-page web page optimization is very high.

For example, if you want to be listed for the search term “buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville” then it is enough to optimize one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is not high. You don’t need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase.

The more competitive the targeted keyword is, the higher is the effect of inbound links on the position of your website in the search results.

The importance of an SEO tactic is not the same as its relative effect on your search engine positions

By taking a look at the chart above you might get the impression that web page optimization is not important to get high rankings for very competitive keywords. That is not the case. Optimizing the contents of a web page is the essential basis for high search engine rankings.

By optimizing a web page for a keyphrase, you tell search engines that the web page is relevant to that keyphrase. If more than one web page has been optimized for that keyphrase (which is usually the case) then the web page with the best inbound links will get the highest position in the search results.

For example, the website www.cnn.com has 46,600 inbound links according to Google. Although CNN.com has so many inbound links, they do not rank for the keyword “buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville” because the website has not been optimized for that keyphrase.

If you want to get high rankings for a keyphrase, the first step is to optimize one of your web pages for that keyphrase. Then work on the links that point to the optimized web page to outrank other websites that have been optimized for the same keyword.

Which tactic should you use for your website?

1. The best web page optimization tactic:

When you optimize your website, optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don’t have much competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords.

For example, start with the keywords “buy sneakers in knoxville”, “buy cowboy boots in knoxville”, “buy pumps in knoxville”, “shoe shop knoxville”, etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic “shoes”.

As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as “buy shoes” or even “shoes”.

The more pages of your website you optimize for different but related keywords, the better.

2. The best link building tactic:

It’s not always necessary that you have more links than your competitors. You need better links.

Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimized for that keyphrase.

Don’t focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won’t help your website as much a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority.

If your website has both optimized web pages and good inbound links then it will be easy to outrank web pages that only have one factor.

How a Blog Can Seriously Help Your Business

Posted on by
Reply

If your business website doesn’t have a blog, get one. A blog, if done right, can act as a direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in particular.

When it comes to optimizing your website (or blog for that matter) for search engines you must always keep in mind two things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the elements of a Web page that better optimize it to be found and ranked well in the search engines. These elements can include on-page content such as the actual sentences and paragraphs on the page, the headlines (or headers or Hx tags), the links, the links’ text, the title tag and much more.

Off-page optimization means the things that are done on sites besides your site, namely link-building. Off-page optimization is the process of creating links (or causing others to create links) on other websites that point to your site. Inbound links as these are often called have a major impact on how well you rank in search engines. Generally speaking, the more inbound links, the better. But the quality of the sites with these inbound links, or the way the search engines perceive the sites, is even more important.

To rank on the first couple of pages on the search engines requires work on both on-page and off-page optimization.

Two additional and important pieces of information that you’ll need to understand are related to site content and internal links.

Search engines also very much love new, original and quality content, and they like to see your website regularly adding this kind of new content. You don’t need to add pages every day, just add pages at the same rate over time. So if you add a page a week to your site, keep it at around that same pace, or increase or decrease gradually.

A website can be considered a living entity in a sense. It certainly shouldn’t be static. It should grow over time. And the fantastic thing about content is that the more of it there is on your site, the more chances you have of getting found in the search engines.

The idea that inbound links help your search engine rankings that I explained above can be extended to your internal pages as well. In other words, the more links to a particular page coming from other pages within the same site will boost that page’s rank as well.

Think of it this way. If you had a ten page site, including a product page and every page on the site contained a link to your product page and, if all other things were equal, your product page would rank higher than the rest of your site’s pages (besides the home page which is given a little extra weíght).

Now let’s consider what would happen if there were only you and your competitor in your industry (if only that could be true!) and your site still had those ten pages while your competitor’s site contained one hundred pages. Furthermore, your competitor set it up the same way as you where he added a link to every page on his site that pointed to his product page. If all other things were equal, his product page would outrank your product page every time. Why? Because he had 100 internal links pointing to his product page and you only had 10.

If you put all these pieces together now, on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and internal linking, can you begin to see why a blog may be a good thing? A blog helps with all of these.

A blog that is regularly updated is providing a mechanism for adding fresh content on a regular basis. Plus, it’s so easy to use a blog that anyone can use them, so even if you or your employees don’t know a thing about Web pages and HTML, you’ll still be able to add new content to your site.

Consider this. If you add fresh, quality content to your blog on a regular basis by writing posts, something the search engines love, and within each post you link to an important page within your site, let’s say your product page for instance, you’re now building links to help your rankings using your blog. With this additional link your product page gets that much more boost in the search engines.

Remember how I explained that links from within your site help your rankings? Adding links within your blog posts pointing back to your other important pages that you want to rank well is a great way to help your rankings.

And every time you publish a new post, you’re giving the search engines one more entry point into your site. Your site will quickly get bigger, and with each new page your site gets more visible.

Keep in mind that the links you make within your blog posts should be relevant. Only link to your product page from a post that has to do with your products. And also, blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. The less you talk about your products and instead offer useful, free information that people can use, the more traffíc and repeat visitors you’ll get.

Remember that people really don’t care about you, your website or your products, they only care about how you can help them. If you sell furniture, a blog post about how to find the best deals on furniture would be far better than a post about how your chairs are the best in the world.

One important thing to remember is that if you plan on creating a new blog for your business as a way to augment your website be sure you put the blog on your actual domain. This means that you would not use a remote service like Blogger.com. Instead, you must have the blog on your business website’s address (or domain). For example, if your website address is http://www.yoursite.com/ then your blog should be located at http://www.yoursite.com/blog or http://blog.yoursite.com/

By adding a blog to your business website you are creating a way to get additional traffic. You’ll get direct traffic from your posts, which get indexed by the search engines and drive traffic to your site from searches. And, you’ll get indirect traffic from your other site’s pages ranking well in the search engines because they have links pointing to them from your blog posts.

You’ll be regularly adding fresh content to your site, which search engines love, thereby creating more ways to be found in the search engines at the same time. And each post provides a new chance to create a link or two to other pages and blog posts on your site, thereby boosting those pages’ rankings.

Like I suggested at the beginning, if your business website doesn’t have a blog, go get one.

About The Author
Jason O’Connor is a Web business and marketing professional who produces The Net Gazette, a free online Web business and marketing periodical. The Net Gazette covers topics that range from blogging for business to Twitter. Read the September edition or visit the main website at: www.thenetgazette.net

Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Matters

Posted on by
2

If you aren’t yet aware of its meaning, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simple enough, but just what is SEO and what is it for? This is a more complex matter.

Search engine optimization refers to a number of different techniques used for building websites and the content on these sites to improve their placident in the search engine results pages.

The idea of SEO is to make your website more visible to web users who search for content with search engines (which is essentially everyone who uses the World Wide Web at all).

If your website is a personal page meant primarily for yourself and perhaps a small number of family members and friends, it may not be all that important to you to have a site which is optimized.

However, if your website is business oriented, it matters a great deal.

Think of it this way: if your business decided to stop being listed in the phone book, took the signs and awnings down and stopped advertising, how successful would you be at attracting new business?

Search engines have for many largely replaced the function once performed by local phone directories.

In order to attract (and even retain) business, you need to have a high profile where your customers are likely to see you – and these days, this place is online.

It once was that if people couldn’t find you in the phone book, your business was in serious trouble. Now, of course the question is how easy it is for people to find your website.

You may have a great looking website and even use the URL in your printed marketing materials and advertising campaigns; but not everyone is going to see your advertisident in the paper.

People tend to look at web sites when they’re actually in need of something and even if a potential customer has seen your ads, it’s not at all certain they’ll remember to go to your site immediately when they’re looking for what you offer.

Instead, your potential customers are using search engines – which is why your business may need some help from a professional SEO consultant to ensure that consumers will find you when they really are looking for you.

One of the things we should look at first here is what the search engines actually see when their crawlers come to your site.

The search engines don’t know (or care) about your site’s design in terms of graphics (though they will read the alternate text for these images – if you don’t know about this important elident of web design, an SEO consultant can help you with this).

All the search engines see when they look at your site is text and nothing but text. For this reason, sites which are entirely Flash-based are not generally recommended from an SEO perspective (many visitors don’t like this either).

What the search engine crawlers are looking at on your site is the actual text contained on your website as well as the information contained in what is known as the headers of your site’s HTML, most notably your title tags.

These tell the search engine crawlers what your site is about – if you don’t include these (or use an entirely graphics or animation based site), the search engines really can’t tell what your site is supposed to be about.

This can be fatal to your site, as it basically assures that no one will be able to find you with a search engine query.

As for how the search engines determine page ranking, this is a much more complex question. The short answer is relevance: but the relevance of any given website is calculated in a number of ways.

The exact nature of the algorithms used by each search engine is different and each is closely guarded proprietary information – to further complicate matters, these algorithms are constantly evolving.

However, there are certain things which the SEO experts have managed to figure out through analysis and reverse engineering of search results and websites which are universally applicable.

This is what enables an SEO consultant to look over a website and suggest changes to the site to increase its visibility in terms of the search engines.

The alterations which can improve a site’s search engine rankings include fine tuning the copy on the site to make it tune with the site’s content, its meta tags or especially popular search terms which are relevant to the content.

There are other changes which will improve a site’s search engine ranking which are not visible to visitors to the site.

These are changes which affect what the search engine crawlers see when they visit the site and help this to more accurately determine what the site is about. There are yet other SEO techniques which your site should avoid using.

What should you avoid?

Let’s take a look at a hypothetical scenario. Suppose your kitchen wares business has a website which is doing well in the results for tea kettles, frying pans and the like.

However, you’d like to further increase traffic – how about trying to rank high in the search engine results for some other non-kitchen related search terms?

This may help to increase traffic to your site, but there are reasons why everyone doesn’t do this. If SEO really worked like that, every site on the web would optimize their content for whatever the most popular searches happened to be.

There are many websites which do this simply to get you to their site by any means. This is one of the several different SEO techniques which are considered “search engine spamming” and should be avoided.

If you’re considering working with a professional search engine optimization firm, you should avoid any company who uses this technique or any of the others which follow:

* Keyword stuffing. * Misleading redirects and link/URL cloaking. * Duplicating content between pages of a website. * Misspelling words and names commonly used as search terms. * The use of unrelated links (also known as link farming). * Or for that matter, any other technique aimed at fooling the search engines.

These “black hat” SEO methods can work as a means of generating traffic, but they only work for so long before the search engines (and the public) catch on.

Once search engines figure out what you’re up to, they often respond by un-indexing your site, making it impossible for anyone to find you with that search engine.

Don’t think you won’t get caught either; the major search engines encourage users to report these deceptive tactics. You can get better and more lasting results with ethical SEO methods; and without having to worry about having your site blacklisted.

Is Your Site Doing Well Enough In Search Results?

Unless you’re already in the top couple of results in the major engines, chances are you’d like to do better regardless of where your site stands at present.

As any expert search engine optimization consultant will tell you, SEO is a process, not a single task. It’s something that you’ll likely have to continue working on as your site slowly but steadily makes its way up the rankings.

This organic SEO approach is the most effective and will get you to where you want to be sooner or later; the most important thing is to ensure that your business’ website is optimized for search engines.

Failing to implident good SEO practices is one nearly certain way to set yourself up for a fall. It is much like the unadvertised, unlisted and unmarked business we discussed earlier.

People who are ready and willing to do business with you will pass you by, unaware that your site even exists. Whether or not to use SEO as an integral part of your marketing strategy isn’t even a question anymore – the question is how you’ll go about it.

About the Author: John S. Britsios is a Web Architect & Senior SEO Consultant, specializing in Web Content Accessibility, Usability Testing, Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing.

Top 7 Google Website Optimizer Tips

Posted on by
6

Here are our top 7 tips for Google Website Optimizer when you are getting started and looking for fast, actionable feedback to improve your website conversion rates.

  1. Keep it Simple
    Start with A/B Testing and test major page changes with fewer variations. Google offers some sophisticated functionality for performing multivariate tests but remember that these complex tests take much longer to get actionable feedback since much higher traffic and ultimately conversions are necessary.
  2. Conversion within 1-click
    An important lesson we have learned is to use a conversion step within one click of the page you are testing because too many variables can come into play that may drastically impact your testing results when using a conversion step that is multiple steps away. For example, if you are testing the conversion of product detail page changes you likely want to use the cart page as the conversion step (1 step away) versus the order confirmation page which may be 3 or more steps away. When using the order confirmation page your test results will likely be skewed by the performance of your cart and checkout process, especially if you are running a simultaneous test on one of these other steps.
  3. Don’t Run Overlapping Tests
    Be very careful not to run tests that may impact or be impacted by other tests. For example, avoid testing simultaneous tests in the checkout process.
  4. Test Pages with Most Potential Impact
    Use Google Analytics and user feedback mechanisms like 4Q surveys, Usability tests to identify areas on your site that will bring the most improvement to your conversion rates. Here are some tips on the common pages to prioritize in your testing efforts:
    - Top of Sales Funnel
    (i.e. Home, Category & Product Detail pages)
    - Higher Traffic
    (i.e. Top Landing/Entry pages, Top Exit pages & Highest Bounce Rate pages)
    - Key Process Step
    (i.e. Cart, Checkout, Account Registration, & Lead Generation Forms)
    (hint: if you have a required registration step REMOVE it)
  5. Disable Poor Performing Variations
    Google Website Optimizer reports will give you visual feedback on your tests. When a test is a success the report will highlight the test variation in green, if it is a failure it will turn red, and when the variation is in progress and not a winner or loser it will be yellow. For example, if you are running your control page (A) against say 3 variation pages (B1, B2, B3) and you see that 1-2 of your variations (B2 & B3) turn red and are performing significantly worse than your control (A) and variation (B1) we recommend disabling (B2 & B3) to accelerate the test to more quickly get the actionable input you are looking for.
  6. Failed Tests are Successes
    Don’t be too frustrated when your new page variations fail. Remember that you have successfully prevented damaging your website conversion rate. All tests are a success when you remember this important point.
  7. Start with Best Practices (and then test them!)
    To improve the likelihood that your tests will be a success, learn from other case studies and proven best practices to create new page testing variations. BUT remember that they are not steadfast rules and you must always Test! What works for Apple, Amazon, or a respected competitor in your industry might work for them but it doesn’t guarantee that it will work for you. Just because you see a certain design, layout, or feature on another site doesn’t mean that is working or that it has been tested successfully.

Original Article Posted on: www.blastam.com/blog/

Find your keyword website ranking on Google, Yahoo and Bing for different keywords

Posted on by
2

A new service KPMRS helps in finding your website ranks on Google, Yahoo an Bing.

Keyword Position Monitoring Report Services. KPMRS is a website rank monitoring services on various search engines for multiple keywords. It tracks the website position for keywords or phrases for a specific URL on Google, Yahoo, Bing and provides a comprehensive report on overall performance and position variation over time, in a nice graphical format.

This tool actually queries Search Engines viz Google, MSN and Yahoo and checks whether the URL given by you appears in the first 1000s list based on the keywords given. If your URL is present, it will give you all the information including the number on which it is present, its position and ranking.

  • Supports Google, Yahoo, Bing and even Alexa!
  • It reports on how your keywords are working.
  • Ge regular email alerts for your website’s performance.
  • View Reports of your keywords.
  • Extremely easy to use.
  • Best Suited for website owners, SEO vendors and Corporates.

KPMRS is a perfect SEO tool developed by SEO professionals for fellow SEO professionals, search engine marketers and website owners. They understand how important it is to know where your website ranks in various search engines. KPMRS felt the need and provided the solution ! Feel free to start using it now.


11 Things Every Successful Website Needs

Posted on by
1

By Merle (c) 2009 MerlesWorld.com

So you’ve put together a spectacular website, and you’re ready to go live on the Internet for the whole world to see. Not so fast there Bucky. In case you didn’t know, there are a few essential requirements that every site needs to include in order to be successful.

Let’s review, shall we:

1) Privacy Policy/Disclaimer: Now, I’m not a lawyer and don’t claim to be one, but these two documents should be standard issue for every site you have. People want to know how you’re going to use their personal information, and a “privacy policy” does just that.

In today’s litigious society you’ll also need to include a disclaímer/terms of use page. This protects you and spells out to your visitors what they’re agreeing to by using your website. If you don’t know where to start in generating these documents, you’ll find plenty of help online.

• DMA Privacy Policy Generator

• OECD Privacy Statement Generator

• Google Adsense & other Ad Networks Privacy Policy Generator

• Privacy Policy Generator

• Free Site Disclaímer

This is not legal advice, and if you need help in this department, consult with a local attorney.

2) Contact Us Information: I can’t tell you how many sites I’ve been to that fail to include a way to contact the owner. If you can’t include a phone number, at the very least have an email address or a “contact us” form. By providing this information, you’ll make your visitors feel more comfortable knowing there’s a way to reach you should the need arise.

If you need a form and don’t know how to create one, try these free form services.

• Bravenet

• Freedback

• Email Me

3) Search Box/Site Map: If your site is rather large, you’ll also want to include a way to search, or have what is called a “site map”. There are many ways to add a search function to your site, the easiest being to use Google’s free service or try PicoSearch A site map sounds technical, but it’s just one web page that contains links to every page of your site, usually broken down by category. Some resources to help can be found at FreeFind.

4) Google Analytics/Tracking System: Once your site is up and running you’ll want to keep your eye on traffic. Who’s visiting your website, what pages are the most popular, where is the traffic coming from. All of these questions and more can be answered by using a good analytics program.

There are several ways to add a thorough tracking system to your site, but the easiest and one that won’t cost you a dime is Google Analytics Once registered, you can add as many sites as you like all under one user ID and password. You’ll be given some code to copy and paste on your pages. Simple, easy, and you’re done.

5) Newsletter Sign Up/RSS Feed: There’s an old saying that people won’t buy from you the very first time they come to your website, so you need a way to stay in touch with them to bring them back again and again. By offering a newsletter, also known as an ezine, you’ll be building a list of possible prospects which is invaluable to any site owner.

You’ll find a multitude of free and low cost newsletter services online. It’s up to you, depending on your needs and what you can afford. If you don’t want to pay anything, my favorite free services are:

• FreeAutoBot

• Yahoo Groups

You can also provide an RSS feed for your newsletter, or updates to your blog or site. This makes it easy for others to keep up with your most recent posts. The best service for this is FeedBurner.

6) Consistent Navigation: This might sound like a no brainer, but many folks get it wrong. No matter what type of menu system you decide upon, make sure it stays the same across the board on all pages of your site.

Your job is to guide your visitors through your website, making sure they always know where they are and how to get to where they need to go.

For more see:

• Eye on Web

• Web Page Mistakes

7) Search Engine Optimized Copy: At first glance you might not think this is so important, but trust me it is. You want your pages to rank well with the search engines and there are a few steps you can take to ensure this happens.

Each page of your website should be optimized for 2, or at the most 3 keywords/phrases. Weave the keywords into your titles and into the body of each page. You can also include them in your image titles, alt tags, even in the names you give your pages. Look at each page individually and decide what it’s about, then optimize accordingly.

For help see:

• MarketLeap

• CopyBlogger

8) Social Media Share Button: With the popularity of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, you’d be foolish not to include an easy way for your content to be shared with others.

You’ll find many free services that will give you the code you need to instantly add a “share button” to your web pages so that visitors can instantly share them with their friends.

To generate your buttons see:

• AddThis

• TwitThis

About The Author

Merle’s Mission Blog – “Rants, Raves and Random Acts of Kindness” a self proclaimed “Internet Junkie” with a passion for net marketing, affiliate marketing, social networking. An avid Blogger and writer with several niche sites to her credít. Find out more at http://merlesworld.blogspot.com

Five Crucial Components of Web Design

Posted on by
2

Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful.

Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

- SEO -
Getting free traffic to your site.

- Usability -
Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

- Aesthetics -
Visual appeal.

- Content -
Valid, up to date, relevant information.

- Graphics -
Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

* Provide a site search tool.

A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.

* Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.

This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.

* Provide logical and simple to follow content.

The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written, without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up to date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

About the Author: Woody Longacre, Internet Web Design. We invite you to visit the Web Hosting Goods Store for Web Design Services, Web Hosting, and Domain Registration.

The Quick and Easy Way to Really Understand Long Tail Keywords

Posted on by
1

By James Gladwin (c) 2009

Have you heard of the 80-20 rule? Well, an Italian economist called Pareto noticed that 80% of land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. His work was taken up by others until it entered mainstream thinking. You’ve probably heard variations of what’s now become known as the 80-20 rule, or the Pareto principle. They go like this: we spend 80% of our time with 20% of our friends, or we wear 20% of our favorite clothes 80% of the time.

More generally, of course, it is a common rule of thumb in business: e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.” In business, for example, Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most reported bugs, 80% percent of the errors and crashes would be eliminated.

So far, so good. But what if you found out that – where your website is concerned – the Pareto principle didn’t hold up so well? That 80% of your major keywords only account for 20% of your sales? In other words, by focusing on a handful of major keywords you may be missing out on the ‘real’ keywords that prospective customers are actually using to find your product or service.

Most webmasters apply the 80-20 rule: that the top keywords provide 80% of the business, but in practice, this has proved to be the opposite. In other words, the keywords that are most sought after are actually rarely those that provide the most business.

Let me put it another way: your website is far more likely to receive most of its search engine visitors through an assortment of low-volume search queries instead of a small group of keywords. And this means that by focusing on identifying the keywords which receive a lower volume of search queries you will see a jump in the overall amount of prospective customers from, say, Google, to your website.

What are these keywords? And how will they improve my visitor traffic?

Well, these keywords have become known as Long Tail Keywords. “Long Tail” because they are phrases that are usually made up of more than three words. For instance: “Paint” is not long tail, but “Outdoor paint for wooden shed” is long tail. Or, take “shoes”: “Adidas running shoes” is almost there. But “Adidas running shoes for women” is a long tail keyword.

Can you see the difference between “horse training” and “quarter horse training products”? Here is another example: ‘Credít Cards’ is the general keyword but effective long tail keywords within this niche could include: ‘good low cost credít cards for nurses’, ‘credít cards for people with bad credít’, ‘credít cards with low interest’, ‘benefits of corporate credít cards’, and so on.

The core ideas about long tail keywords is that there is less competition for them, so it’s easier to get good search engine rankings, and also the fact that people who search certain long tail keywords are much more likely to be potential purchasers. By optimizing your website and delivering content to match these search queries you will be attracting visitors who are searching for specific product information using these and other related search phrases.

And there’s no doubt that long tail keywords are highly effective at attracting traffic. What’s more important, there are thousands and thousands of long tail keywords which no one or very few people are pinpointing and so can easily be utilised.

So here are four key reasons why you should consider using long tail keywords to optimize your website for search engines:

First, focusing on long tail keywords will slowly but surely lead to more search engine traffic because you will have many, many web pages indexed and ranked for specific phrases related to your products or services. This means higher visibility and so a greater volume of search engine traffic.

Next, long tail keywords lead to higher purchase ratios. Visitors who come to your site via long tail search queries are more likely to purchase or take up on affiliate programs. By focusing on these long tail phrases, you are actually zeroing in on a vast market of potential buyers.

Third, long tail keywords lead to higher page ranking because there is generally far less competition. There is so much more scope for variation when you start digging for the phrases that people actually use when they enter search terms.

Finally, using long tail keywords means that your sites have the potential for greater monetization. People who find your site because they used a search engine such as Google or Yahoo are high value for this reason: they are people who are looking for specific information. So they are highly likely to follow relevant advertisements or subscribe to your blog feed or ezine.

So here’s the nutshell: more long tail keywords equals more potential customers equals more likely sales. Good luck!

About The Author
Website not making you any money? Go to UltraSimpleWebTraffic.com and claim your free visitor traffic mini course by James Gladwin and discover the secrets of how to get high traffic numbers.