Mike Small is the SEO Specialist for Marketing Considerations, LLC. Based in Richmond Virginia, Marketing Considerations helps clients from all over the US, Japan, Germany and the UK with their search engine optimization needs.
Be #1 on MSN Bing by Christmas. Really!
November 24, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
MSN’s new counterpart Bing is rewriting search engine history. Touted by Microsoft as the first ever “decision engine” it’s picking up steam like Yahoo in its heyday and is in place to give Google a serious run for its money.
Speaking of “serious”; it’s important to mention that MSN and now Bing are the search engine of choice for most credit card carrying adults. In fact, MSN Bing is the default search engine on every new Windows PC sold. That’s Big! A lot of people go to Google for playing around but stick to Bing when they mean business. And that’s great for you!
I recently obtained ten (out of 10!) top five placements on MSN Bing using a simple formula I can share right now. It took me only a few hours to do all the work, including the domain purchase and setting up hosting. Here is that magic formula:
* Focus on just one keyword for the site. Make it your most important.
* Use the exact keyword phrase as your domain name and be sure it ends in .com, .net, or .org. It is fine to use dashes between each or any combination of words in the domain name. They are treated as spaces by the search engine and are typically much easier to get than domains without dashes.
* Pay for two or more years when you register the domain. They appear to be using Google’s trick of checking registration dates and giving preference to those registered for more than one year.
* Post just one or two pages. If you need more than a home page, add a contact page or something else light on text. Note: You can use your site as a landing page and create links to all of your main site’s pages.
* Keep your home page text between 250 and 400 words. If you need to say more, add images that contain the text you want displayed.
* Put your keywords in the headings but do not use “head tags” or “strong tags.” Just make the text big and bold using the “bold tag.”
* Use your keyword phrase up to two times per one hundred words of text, but do not go over five full mentions for the entire page of text (plus up to two more for headings.)
* Mention your full keyword phrase once toward the beginning of the first paragraph and again within the first one third of the page text. Then use it once near the end of the page text. The other mentions can go anywhere in between.
* If you decide to go the software route to get faster results (still using these tips), stick with one that works well for MSN Bing. Many do not. Note: I developed the method above by using the tool I found at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com.
Results: Here’s one example… I took one local client’s main keyword phrase of “richmond auto repair”, separated each word with a dash and registered the dotcom version. Within two weeks it became number one on MSN Bing for that keyword phrase and has stayed there as a gateway to the main site. It’s been four months now and I’ve done this for dozens of keywords, with my last experiment yielding 10 for 10 using just the tips listed here.
You can do it too.
How to Market Your Blog for Optimal SEO Gains
November 20, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Ok, so you’ve created your nice shiny new blog, and you’ve been adding high quality postings containing lots of useful information on a regular basis for a few weeks (or months)… whats next?
Review Your Blog
First, take stock of your blog’s set-up, and make sure its ready for debut;
1.) Do your postings have some relevant key word content in the headings? If you’re intending to improve your overall ranking across search engines, remember to “optimise” the page just as you would any other page of your site. Decide on the keyword phrase you are targeting, make sure its used in the heading. Make sure its highlighted in the body text, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.
2.) Do your postings contain a “clickable” link or two back to your site? By this I mean a “proper” link in the format (a onClick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(’/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://www.example.com”)Example Link(/a) and not just your plain URL. To build traffic, you want to make it easy for people to get to your site!
3.) Does each posting contain your “Author Details Panel” that credits the articles and postings to you, including your (clickable) site URL information? Make your links open in a new window – thats a kind gesture to those who’d like to return and finish reading the original page…
4.) Have you made a statement of your copyright constraints, if any? Perhaps you should encourage people to copy and distribute your blog content, providing the Author Panel remains intact? That would be the best way to ensure widest distribution, and the consequent proliferation of valuable 1-way links back to your site! Write up your requirements, and post it as a page, which then generates a permanent link on your Blog menu.
Blog Marketing
You will probably want other people to read your blog in order that they may appreciate your literary genius, right? But of course, nobody knows where its at yet, so you’ve got to give it some publicity. The first step should be to add a prominent link to it on your own web site, or sites – pretty obvious, you’d think? However, in all the excitement, that is sometimes overlooked!
More importantly, if you want it to start generating lots of nice new incoming links, and generating serious traffic increases, you’ve got to actively “market” your blog to the places that blog readers go… and “Where is that, pray tell me do?” I hear you say…
Well, the ping services you’ve added earlier are all well and good, but due to the volume of spam and garbage postings, some discipline had to be installed into the blog process to exert some control. Your site is no doubt “pinging” a variety of servers each time you create an entry. However, before any significant transfer activity takes place, you will have to front up and formally register yourself and your blog with as many of those services as possible.
The process is analogous to submitting to a normal search engine or directory, and pretty much for the same reasons. In some cases you may be asked for a reciprocal link – not too much to ask for the favour about to be rendeered to you. In other cases, a “donation” might be requested. Before handing over the cash, have the sense to check the Google Page Rank of the site… its got to be high (5+) to be worth it!
The challenge is finding all these blog directories… but a brief search will show that there are listings available.
By the time you’ve spent a day working through the 150+ directories accessible from the various links you’ve located, you’ll be in good shape to get that traffic counter ticking along. Your postings, and the consequent “ping” to the various services, should now have your content distribution flowing right along.
Good luck!
Ben Kemp is a free-lance
SEO consultant and offers more blog listing tips at Blog Directories
Web: http://www.comauth.co.nz
SEO consultant and offers more blog listing tips at Blog Directories
Web: http://www.comauth.co.nz
Search Engine Optimization – 7 Plus 2 Killer SEO Techniques
November 15, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
As more and more people round the world are surfing the net everyday, the competition to attract their attention has increased by leaps and bounds in the recent years. Companies – big and small, professionals and individuals are all in the race. Innumerable web pages are being produced and being hosted everyday. All of them are keen to rank high in the SERP or Search Engine Result Pages. and the so the SEO experts are busy than ever before.
An experienced SEO professional knows that the way major search engines like Google, evaluate web pages has changed through these years. Search Engine are getting smarter and smarter. Fooling a search engine is becoming harder. Or should I say risky. When you try to fool search engines, you run the risk to get banned. So, what triumphs? Real good contents? Back linking? What else?
Let’s see what are the hottest SEO ‘on page’ and ‘off page’ techniques on which SEO experts have unanimously expressed their trust. This list is not necessarily on merit basis, I mean, the first factor on top of the list doesn’t mean that it is the most important SEO factor.
On-page techniques
1. The Title tag
Go to the Google search page, type any keyword and hit enter. Have you ever noticed the starting line of each result ? It’s the ‘title’ of the web site. So, it goes without saying that ‘title’ is important. You must have an appropriate ‘title’ for your web site containing the most relevant keywords.
2. Meta Description.
You will often hear or read that Meta tags are no good anymore. But the Meta Description tag still holds good. You will never find an optimized web page without it. No SEO skips this one, on the contrary takes care that the description is comprehensive, precise and to the point.
3. H1, H2, H3 tags
The headings. The ‘H1′ tag or the header is most probably the most significant body tag in terms of SEO along with the ‘Alt’ tag . It is supposed to be the main headline of a web page and should comprise of its primary keywords or key-phrases. You should have precisely described ‘H1′ tag on each of your web pages. If you don’t like the look and feel of the ‘H’ tags, use CSS to design it to your choice.
4. ‘Alt’ tags.
Unfortunately search engine spiders cant view the images on your web pages. Neither they can view those lovely Flash content or animated GIFs displayed in the pages of your web site. They can only read texts. so feed them with some descriptive texts about the images or Flash contents that you may have on your web pages as alternatives. The primary use of the ‘Alt’ tag is to describe your images or the likes of Flash banners etc. Use this to your advantage – use your keywords as ‘Alt’ tags. It really helps and is widely used by all SEO experts.
5. Internal Anchor Text links
Using ‘Anchor Texts’ to link other pages of the web site is now being considered as one of the most important factor that influences page ranks. You can judge it yourself. Choose any well optimized web site with high page rank. Go to the Google search page, type link:thesiteyouchose.com and hit enter. The search will return with several pages and you will notice that quite a few of them are from that very site itself. So, instead of ‘click here’ do consider using ‘For more information on something go to the something page’ (replace ’something’ for anything you like). I hope you got the idea.
6. Suitably named files and folders
This concept is also relatively new. It has worked like a charm for me. The idea is to name a file ‘contact-a-web-designer.html’ instead of just ‘contact.html’. Or rename your ‘download’ folder as ‘download-cheap-web-templates’. Does it make any sense? I hope it does. Try it, you will not regret.
7. Quality content.
That goes without saying. Good, quality content which is appealing to the viewers is indispensable. Nothing can influence the search engine more, make no mistake. Make sure you write the contents for your web site visitors and not the search engines. And it is very important that you add fresh contents to your web pages regularly – it tells the search engine that your web site is very much alive.
Off-page techniques
1. Link building
Good content and consistent link building – the two most important factors of Search engine optimization. Gone are the days where any links were good enough to achieve good page ranks with the search engines. Now you should take utmost care on who are linking to you and from where? You must have come across the terms like “relevant web site/page” and “good neighborhood”. It means that you get more credit if you get back-linking from web sites which are based on the same theme as yours and preferably have high page ranks – the more the better. And instead of placing your url as links use your primary keywords as Anchor Text links.
Now the million dollar question ? Who is going to link to you? Why should well established web sites with high page ranks will consider linking to a new site like yours? Well to harm trying. Most of them will not, but if you have a decent site with quality content some may just agree. But don’t worry. Fortunately you have some other options to gain some back-links. Submitting to directories is certainly one of them. Try writing some good articles on your web site theme and submit them to directories round the world. Most article directories will allow you to put a couple of links inside your article provided your article is good enough to be selected. Start trying and you will soon find that it’s not that hard. submitting to various directories get your web site indexed by the search engine much faster than otherwise.
2. Approach
Yes. Your overall approach towards optimizing your web site will eventually influence your site’s ranking in more than one ways. ‘Slow but steady’ should be the right approach. You can’t achieve anything here in the SEO world overnight. patience is the key here. Don’t try to optimize your site for broad keywords like ‘web design’ or ‘Pizzas’ at the first instance- it will be sheer waste of time and energy. Rather chose what is known as ‘long tail technique’. For example go for ‘affordable web site design Santa Monica’. And when you have got some results start working on those broader keywords. And you should have the same approach towards link-building as well. Be realistic. Don’t try to get too many links too fast. search engine call it spamming and they ban spammers. Just keep every thing plain and simple.
It is not so hard to earn money from the net. But you should make your self deserving. it is not hard to attract visitors to your web site, but then again your site should worth it. And believe me, you can make your web site worthy.
The author is a web designer turned SEO professional. He also runs a Manual Directory Submission Service web site. To find more on SEO techniques read the same author’s SEO for High Page Ranking.
WARNING: Don’t let your SEO consultant know about this!
November 8, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the biggest ‘grey areas’ in online marketing. It is full of jargon, confusion and misinterpretation.
I like making things easy, SEO included.
So what I am going to do in this article is to go through some of the bare basics of SEO that you, as a small business owner, can implement into your website. This article is not intended for experienced SEO gurus and experts who always seem to comment on ‘basic SEO’ blogs that the content is too simplified. This article is for people who know nothing about SEO or have been told a whole bunch of jargon about it and want to understand it slightly better to get a general idea of it.
SEO is not a quick fix, however, and using the easy methods below will not suddenly catapult you to the top of Google.
Successful SEO is made up of many (hundreds, even) factors and contributors and requires patience. To achieve good results, not all factors and contributors need to be met – doing a few of them very well can be enough.
Ok, so obviously you need some good keywords/keyphrases that you want to be found for in the search engines (different search engines like different things in terms of SEO, but that is another article in itself!).
For the purposes of this article, I will use the old favourite, ‘Blue Widgets’, as our keyphrase.
Website Optimisation (On-page optimization)
Depending on how your website is made, it will have the following basic options for you to edit (in no particular order of importance):
- Meta Keywords
- Meta Descriptions
- Page Title
- ALT Text for images
- Body Text
- H1 Headings
- Bold Text
- Anchor Text
Within the above, you will want to have a good density of your keywords/keyphrases (“Blue Widgets”). A basic way of looking at the above for our keyphrase would be like this:
- Meta Keywords: (Meta keywords are made for search engines only – so that they easily grasp your page’s most important topics. There is a special meta keywords tag, which is supposed to briefly list the topics of your webpage. And it is wise to put your most valuable keywords into it. A meta keywords tag is not obligatory, and some sites do not make it at all. Still it takes so little time to make that if you are serious about optimizing your page, there is simply no reason why you shouldn’t have a good meta keywords tag)
- Meta Description: (this is just a short sentence/paragraph to describe the website/business – must make sense to read in continuous prose! Search engines look at a page’s meta description to find out what your page is about. You also see meta descriptions quite often – if you make a search in Google and look at the results, you will see some text under each link in the results page. Most often, these texts are pages’ meta descriptions. Meta description may not be extremely important for optimization, but still you have to make sure it looks attractive to search engines and to people)
- Page Title: (Search engines pay certain attention to titles, and show them in their results pages. this is also the text at the top of your Internet browser’s window)
- ALT (Alternative) Text for images: (The image alt text is used to display text when an image cannot be seen, for example in the case someone visits your page with a browser that has image loading turned off to let pages load faster. Obviously, using alt text makes sense for humans: many users prefer to work with images disabled. What is more important for you now, alt image attributes also have value for search engine optimization. Search engines cannot read figures or letters that are drawn on images. They only read normal text. Your keywords may look fantastic and eye-catching on an image – but the only guarantee that Google.co.uk (pages from the UK) will see them is the alt text. Therefore making alt text attributes and including your keywords into them is another efficient SEO technique). This method used to attract lots of abuse by people ‘stuffing’ lots of keywords ‘behind’ the image. Don’t do it!
- Body Text: You want to strike a good balance between keyword density (how many times you mention your keyword) and keyword prominence (how early on the page your keywords appear). You must write your body text (and much of the website, for that matter) with a human visitor in mind and not for the search engines. If the site has good, fresh content and is regularly updated the search engines will come and find you anyway. Your body text needs to make sense to human readers whilst having your keyphrase mentioned within the text.
- H1 Headings (and H2, H3…): In HTML code, headings are marked with h1 to h6 tags. These tags simply define the size of your headings, as they appear to the user. Among these six levels of headings, h1 is the biggest one and h6 the smallest. This is an example of an h1 tag: <>Blue Widgets< /h1 >As we want our headlines, titles and other important things to look prominent, we normally put them into h-tags. And just like people think that the most prominent text on the page is more important than the rest, search engines pay more attention to what is written within h-tags. It is important to them how you use your keywords in headings. The biggest heading, h1, is most important to search engines. So to get a better ranking, use your major keywords correctly in h1 tags.
- Bold Text:When a website is ‘read’ by Google, bold text stands out. Simple as! If you can put your keyphrases in bold through your body text whilst still maintaining the theme of the website, go for it!
- Anchor Text: Anchor text is when a keyword/keyphrase is linked to another webpage. Commonly known as a hyperlink. For example, instead of having a link to ‘www.google.co.uk’ an anchor is the word ‘Search Engine’ which is clickable and takes you to whatever website it is linked to. A good practice to consider is to find relevant websites to yours that have a good reputation and are legitimate (i.e. not ‘link farms’) and asking the owner of the website to link back to your site, using an anchor link. So instead of them linking to www.bluewidgets.com you would ask them to link to that site, but using the words ‘Blue Widges’. Remember, each link pointing back to your website is seen as a vote of confidence in your website. You just have to be careful what sort of sites you put your link on.
There is much more to talk about, especially anchor texts and building links pointing back to your website but that is for another day. By looking at the above sections of your website, you will have started some basic SEO.
Remember, having a website is like a shop. If nobody can find your shop, you won’t do much business through it!
To use the same software that I use for my own websites and my clients to track Google & other search engine rankings for keywords and also to create website audit reports to measure how effective an on-page SEO strategy is as well as building links, download a free trial at http://www.doityourselfoptimization.com
Suraj Sodha is a Professional Internet Marketer, specialising in website design, SEO & affiliate marketing.
Top SEO Tips
November 3, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
When you have spent hours, weeks and perhaps months to develop your website, it is very frustrating that the page does not appear in search engines like Google. Lets go through Search Engine Optimization and how it can help you get a good position in Google and other search engines.
SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a name for all the activities you are doing to get visibility in search engines like Google and Yahoo. SEO can be anything from small changes to the Web site to complete the rebuilding of websites and advanced link strategies. The goal is the same, rank better in Google or any other search engine. This techniques is something that you should be doing when you create the website.
SEO Tips
When Google and other search engines are looking to index your web pages, they prefer that the website has been built up semantic. Creating semantic HTML is about using W3C predefined tags for items such as headings, paragraphs, lists and structured text. Doing so will Google and other search engines better understand what’s in your content.
Robots Exclusion Standard, or “robots.txt” is a term you often hear in the SEO context. Robots.txt is a file that is located on the root of the site. It is not used by visitors but website owners who want to tell search engines how to index a page. Or rather what not to index. website owners can use a Robots Exclusion Standard file to specify how the content will be indexed by robots like Google and Yahoo. With a robots.txt file, you can limit what the search engine indexes, and make the indexing of your site more effective. Do not let the search engine index your RSS feed, your blog or the management section of your CMS – this will help not on the visibility of your website. Even if you do not want to limit your search engine, it is recommended to have a robots.txt file on your website. This is because the engine will always look for this file, if it not find the file it will be sent to your 404-page (Page not found). This will not affect your ranking, but can save you some 404 error messages in your stats.
Previous the search engines use meta tags to gather information on a website. And it was essentially the meta tags “description” and “keywords” that was used. Meta Keyword tag is not as important as the Meta Description tag, as they don’t affect if the website will be found when searching for that keyword or not. Google for example do not emphasis on the “Keyword”. A few search engines do, however, growing emphasis on those keywords so you can still add them, but they will not affect your position in the major search engines. Meta Tags were quickly abused and search engines have, therefore, in recent years not emphasized these meta tags to index. It is still important that the meta tags actually provided, and more than often it is actually your own meta-description that end up as the description on the Google website.
Google, Yahoo and other search engines search through your pages from several times a day to a couple of times a week. It would be practical to tell the search engines of all the pages your site consists of and when they were last updated. With a so-called sitemap or area map, you can do just that. A Site map provides an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for review. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs on the site) so that search engines can go through the site in a more intelligent manner. A site map is a complete “map” of your website that Google, Yahoo and other search engines can use to index your site. With an area map you’ll probably get a faster and more accurate indexing than without. Most modern publishing tools has built support or modules that provide support for site maps. Do you have a smaller site, you can also create such a map by hand, following the protocol to the site maps. The easiest is still to let your CMS do the job of developing the site maps.
Finally, the content of the pages will always be the most important. With good and relevant content, the “customers” always come back, and maybe also linked to your page from your other pages.
Einar is the webmaster of Freerollmaster and Weblinks
Wordpress and SEO Techniques For Your Blog
November 1, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Wordpress is the most important and popular blog platform today, embraced by numerous individuals, CEOs, marketing managers and anyone who has a message to communicate online. There are more than 50 million blogs out there, therefore, if you are planning to stand out, you have no choice but to keep the phrase Wordpress and SEO in mind. Wordpress is an amazing platform, very well appointed, offering a lot of amazing SEO power already built in. not everything comes by default, though, and you need to follow particular tips and hints in order to make a difference.
Most bloggers tend to forget that Wordpress and SEO go together, and do not implement some of them, condemning their blog posts to invisibility, no matter how good they might be. Optimization for search engines depends on many different factors and can be implemented in many different ways. Here is what you should keep in mind if you want to implement a good SEO strategy for your blog:
Permalink Optimization: The most important thing you can do regarding Wordpress and SEO is to use the right keywords in the title. No matter how nicely written is your blog post, if no one can find it, it doesn’t really make any sense. The right keywords can make your URL visible and more attractive.
Tags: Tags are very important for SEO, but only if they are useful and well picked. You do not need useless and unnecessary tags; there is no point in adding tags that have nothing to do with your permalink or description. On the contrary, they lessen the emphasis given on the title keywords.
Wordpress allows you to use Headings and Subheadings. Use them. They are defined by html code, with H1 for the main heading to H6 for the smaller one. If you are writing a long post with several topics elaborated in it, it’s a good idea to use sub headings, because this way you allow the search engines to search for keywords in the blog, and not only in the title. This way you increase the comprehensiveness of your blog in keywords and implement one of the most important Wordpress and SEO techniques.
Design: keeping the wordpress design clean, clear and simple is crucial. The body text should be written using clear heading and lines. Most bookmarking sites are against blogs, because of possible spamming, therefore keeping your blog well appointed and clear, can help your blog look more like a site, liked and appreciated everywhere. The design should also be clean because of crawlers; if Google, for example, sends a crawler to scan your blog and everything is too messy, with flashy and attacking designs and weird codes, chances are you will be ignored. Moreover, a clear design and text allows the visitor to see your text directly, without wondering where to click;
Wordpress and SEO techniques already built in the platform and these tips here can help you create a likeable site and interesting texts, with SEO interest as well, allowing your blog to be among the first results in Search engine queries.
Find more information about wordpress, Visit
SEO Tips For Newbies
October 31, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
SEO or search engine optimization knowledge is critical for the person starting out in e-commerce. Whether you want to blog, run an online store or do anything else successfully online, you need to figure out how to get noticed by search engines so that people can find you. Understanding SEO is critical for anyone who wants to be successful in online enterprise.
An important aspect of search engine optimization is the fact that you need to invest time and effort into your website on a regular basis in order get traffic and keep traffic continuously increasing. If you allow your website to sit and collect cobwebs it won’t do much for you.
SEO Tip #1:
There isn’t a magical formula; at least not one that’s evergreen so it’s important to stay current on SEO news. Dig deep to find information and read everything you can. You’ll find conflicting information at times but knowledge is power so absorb as much SEO news as you can.
SEO Tip # 2:
Create an easy to follow design with a standard homepage, easily viewable links and a site index. This way, people and search engines can find their way around easily and so can people.
SEO Tip # 3:
Determine what your target keywords are. There are some great tools out there that can help you both for free or for a small fee. Often it’s fairly easy to figure this out on your own.
Ask yourself:
What are the top three to five words or phrases you would use if you were use to search for the product or topic you are selling? Be sure that those words are on each page of your website, especially in titles, headings and at the beginning, middle and end of each page. It’s a good idea to use variations as well to give your site further credibility and increase the Long Tail.
SEO Tip # 4:
SEO Fact : Content is king. Always will be. Don’t assume that more is better in terms of keywords. Do not fall victim to the temptation to simply keyword stuff your site otherwise two things will happen. First, you’ll get banned by the search engines and even worse, you’ll be ignored by the humans who land on your page. Both types of visitors can see through vain SEO attempts to trick you to get onto their site.
Instead, you want to target the fine line between having enough keyword relevancy to make it impossible for the search engines to ignore you but not so much that your human visitors find your content to be poor quality. Hire a professional SEO article writer if you have to in order to come across as professional. Keep fresh content on your pages and change your content regularly. You don’t have to waste what you’ve put effort and money into, instead move your old content into archives so it continues to work for you as well.
SEO Tip # 5:
Web 2.0 is all about social networking. Social networking, social book marking, forum posting and link exchanges can be invaluable If you can get high ranking websites in your niche to exchange links with you, this can help. If you are blogging, comment on other blogs in your niche to get a link back to your site and generate interest from bloggers that frequent other sites in your niche. If you use tools like Technorati, Digg, StumbleUpon and other social book marking tools on your pages with appropriate tagging, you can bring relevant traffic fairly quickly and it’s viral so others will do the same. Social networking activities are also indexed by the search engines.
In summary, there are basic to advanced seo techniques and seo tips that you can use to get noticed by the big three search engines. Your results will depend a lot on how narrow your niche is but there are some basic things you can do to be search engine friendly from the start. It’s never too late to optimize your site though so don’t lose heart if you didn’t follow this advice on your website from the beginning. Here are some basic ideas. This is not an exhaustive list but is a great place to start.
Matthew is the developer of TheWebReviewer: Legitimate Home Based Business Reviews, and NetWebVideo: Mastering SEO, Adwords, and Affiliate Marketing. Matt currently lives in San Diego, CA and is married with two children and has been an online marketer since 2006.
The Write Way To Better Website Traffic Results
October 26, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
When you are trying to develop a successful website, you soon realize that your website content is very important. Websites with great content are more likely to have great traffic results than those with lousy articles and headings. The more interesting and diverse your content, the better traffic results you will have.
When trying to get the right mixture of content, you may become frustrated. This is especially true if you are not a strong writer. Use these tips to help you find out more about website content and the decisions you can make to create the best text on the web.
Care about Content
Many times, website operators do not give content much thought. This happens more frequently than one might expect and the repercussions are immediate. If you want better website traffic results, you should always be sure that you make content a priority. Whether you write the content yourself, or hire professional writers to develop it for you, it should be quality writing.
Someone who has passion for the subject should write it. The more passion the writer has, the better the writing will likely be. Usually, this is the website owner and operator, because no one will want the site to succeed as much as this individual. However, if you are not a great writer, you can always hire professionals to help you with the task.
Quality over Quantity
When it comes to website content, there are obviously guidelines. When trying to fill up a specific amount of area on a website, it may be necessary to set limits on word count. As a whole however, you should always strive for quality over quantity. Having too much content can drive viewers away because they are likely to get bored. Knowing exactly how much content you need for your site can also be a challenge.
You should always view your site like a potential visitor would, which means that many of your decisions may be made by instinct. You will know when you have too much content on your site. The main goal is to have specific and direct content that is not too wordy. When there are excessive words in the content, you will quickly lose your audience. Be direct and to the point with your writing and you will be more efficient overall.
Natural Flow
Like discussed before, much of the content decisions for your website will be done with instinct. You need to be sure the content flows naturally. Natural flowing content leads easily to other issues. One subject should flow into the other seamlessly. The same is true with the placement of other website functions. When you are writing, consider the placement of submit buttons or other links on the page. This can help you develop content that looks great on the page as well as sounds great to the reader. If a piece feels unnatural when its being written, it will likely look uncomfortable to the reader and will be a disaster on your website.
Proofread
Some of the most unnecessary mistakes made with website content writing are grammatical. Websites that contain articles with spelling and grammar mistakes come can look ridiculous. If you want your site to be taken seriously, you should always be sure that your articles are proofread many times. This will help ensure you are delivering information that is intelligent and complete. It may help you to read your text out loud, in order to hear what it actually sounds like. Although it may seem unnecessary, you will find that the response will be greater when your text is without mistake.
As you can see, there are several important aspects to developing website content that will boost and maintain your website traffic. You should focus on passion, quality, and flow of your content. If you would rather not worry about these issues, hiring a professional is the way to go.
However, if you are up to the challenge, try it yourself. Just relax and begin writing. Let the content come to you without effort. Try different approaches with your writing and you will quickly learn what works best for your site and its traffic. As long as it feels right to you when you read it on the site, it will likely look great to your sites visitors as well.
For several years now, Jason has been reviewing hundreds of online products and services. Many consider his reviews to be very insightful and reliable. Visit his website creativedigitalmedia.com
Blog Tips And Strategies
October 24, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Blogging Tips
Even though the internet is a fast paced environment and its getting harder and harder for the average blogger to keep up with it all, fortunately, some blog strategies have remained the same. Here’s a reminder, along with a few blog tips.
Posting Tips
Avoid large blocks of text
Be sure to break up your article into readable bites. Most people who use the internet are scanners. So make sure you use descriptive headings within your post to catch their eye. Keep it focused and as short as possible. Try and find a picture that is relevant, to place within your article.
Check Your Spelling and Editing
Misspelling words even happens with the pros and they are given a certain amount of leeway. But for unknown writers it is a stab at their credibility. It looks as if you don’t really care, so why should your reader?
Post Regularly
Try and set a regular posting rhythm. Not only will you keep your regular visitors interested, you will also keep the interest of the search engines and their bots. Fresh content equals better search engine rankings and more visitors.
Make Sure Your Post Titles Are What they Say They Are
The search engines read them and then sort and rank them accordingly. That is what is offered up to people who are searching for that particular information. Don’t let either of them down.
Include A Signature and A Post Date
Contrary to what you may believe, your posts are not always timeless. Letting your reader know when your article was posted also lets them know how long you have been at it and can give you more credibility. Your signature lets them know exactly who wrote the post.
Other Blog Tips
Include An Author Bio and Picture.
People like to put a face on the writer and their bio gives them a sense of what they are all about. Now unless you are writing exclusively about yourself and your life, don’t put out too much personal information. Once you post it out there on the net, it’s pretty much out there for good. Even if you decide to delete information later, there are ways for other people to recapture it
Bad Links
Nothing is more frustrating to your visitor when they click on a link that takes them nowhere, or when they are redirected to something completely else.
Keep You Blog Focused
Don’t try to be everything to everybody. Just focus on your targeted audience.
Your RSS Button
Be sure to have one, and that it is easy to find.
Sidebar Content And Links
Keep everything relevant. Studies have shown that offering too many choices to your readers is too confusing and they are less likely to click on them.
The Overall Best Blog Strategy
Own Your Own Domain Name
There are many services that host your blog and give you a domain name for free, and that’s a great opportunity to get started. But what about down the road? Its always best to own your own domain name and pay for inexpensive hosting. This way you will retain control over your content and internet destiny, not someone else.
Follow these basic blog tips and strategies, and then improve on them. If you want to be successful at anything, remember the basics and keep learning!
Be Fearless
Billy Ojai
Would You Like Some Great MRR and or PLR Products for Your Internet Marketing Projects? Visit: http://billyojai.com. Need to learn better copywriting techniques? Pick up a free copy of ‘Copywriting For The Web’at: http://billyojai.com
-
FOR SALE
