Optimization Of A Website For Your Local Market
Having a site globally optimized for certain keywords is great, if you happen to have a business that sells its products or services all over the planet. But what if your industry is a local one, or if the products you sell only cater to a specific city or county? Does it make sense to be in competition with hundreds or even thousands of other companies like yours when dealing for a local, smaller market?
In the same way that the good ‘old Yellow Pages have helped local and small businesses thrive before the advent of the Internet, today, a properly positioned website for a specific city or local market can do the same, even better and faster! Having your site optimized for your local market can bring you a lot of sales, not to mention the repeat business spread over many years. In this article, I will show you how to concentrate your SEO efforts to just one specific geographic location or city.
Your Geo-Title Tags
Can you think of a better place to start than on your title tags! If your title tag for an important products page is ‘black widgets’ and you only sell those black widgets in the city of Toronto, by naming that title tag ‘Black Widgets for Toronto’ or ‘Toronto Black Widgets’, just that simple step alone would drive a lot more sales to your site, providing people would type ‘Toronto’, either before or after the keywords ‘Black Widgets’. If you are living in San Francisco and you only want to sell those black widgets in that city, you would name them: ‘San Francisco Black Widgets’ and so on and so forth.
Going a step further, if you are only interested in a specific district, you should name that district as part of your title tag. A good example would be: ‘North Miami Black Widgets’. You wouldn’t rank as highly if people would type only ‘Miami Black Widgets’ in Google, but you would probably beat most of your outside competitors if they would type: ‘North Miami Black Widgets’, as your title tag would appear mostly at the top of the results page in Google, or just about any other major search engine for that matter. The whole idea here is relevancy, and North Miami is more relevant than just Miami, for a person living in North Miami.
Your “Geo-Headline” Or Descriptive Header Text
If you are optimizing your site for your local market, placing a ‘Geo-Headline’ in bold H1 or H2 tags will also help you a great deal. If your market is strictly the city of Calgary, you could write a Geo-Headline that would look something like this:
“City of Calgary Black Widgets” or “Black Widgets made for Calgary”. Either one of these would drive a lot of targeted traffic to your site, since they are Geographically (Geo) specific.
Today more than ever, the major search engines are using complex algorithms and sophisticated ranking formulas that take geo-physical location under consideration, further increasing your chances of a better ranking for a specific local market.
Your Body Text And “Geo-Sales” Copy
The same principles need to be applied to the body of your text for maximum local visibility in the search engines. If your local market is the city of Edmonton Alberta, instead of writing: ‘Visit our green widgets page and check our great prices’, you could write: ‘Our green widgets have been formulated to withstand Edmonton’s harshest winters and are Albertan’s first choice when it comes to after-sale service and warranty’.
Such strong Geo-Location copywriting is certain to get your site ranked well in the search engines. If you noticed carefully, I have included Edmonton and Alberta as two separate but very relevant geo-physical locations, as probably many searchers would type in the search box.
Use my “Geo-Linking” Strategy To The Fullest
If you really want to go all the way with my ‘Geo-Thinking’ that I spoke about so far, then consider using my Geo-Linking strategy! What is Geo-Linking? My Geo-Linking strategy is to use the name of your city or local market in the text link from one page of your site to another. Here are a few examples:
1- Please click here to view our New York City Red Widgets
2- Click here to examine our Washington apartments
3- Compare our low prices on our Quebec City rental cars
4- Take a virtual tour of our Madison County City Hall
5- Read Denver-West’s real estate history since 1940
Conclusion
Optimizing a website for a local market or just a single city can be as simple and as straightforward as this. These are the basics and if you stick to them, you should do great. Always try to put yourself in the ‘shoes’ of your average searcher.
If you are selling real-estate in just the eastern tip of a large city, use the many examples I gave you in this article and, in less time than it takes to have a Yellow Pages ad approved, printed and distributed in your city, your website should start generating targeted and strong local sales from many of your local prospects, searching for YOUR local products or services.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Accepted Ethical Practices
Unfortunately, the marketplace today is still littered with many unscrupulous search engine optimization firms that claim to be experts in the field. During my day-to-day job as an SEO, I often encounter so-called search engine marketing companies, SEO firms or individuals that always promise you the world but fail to deliver any worthwhile results or any serious ROI.
They often use forbidden techniques by the search engines such as invisible text, invisible links, one-pixel links, doorway or gateway pages etc. You would think that after all these years they would have learned something worthwhile, but apparently such is not the case for some of them. Let’s not generalize here: most SEO firms make a great job at professionally positioning a website in the major search engines and provide a valuable service to the business community.
However, some of them don’t, and these are the ones you have to watch out for. For the sake of clarity, this article will explain the right and “acceptable” techniques that are recommended by the major search engines and these are the techniques that will make your site stand out from your competitors– without risking of getting your site penalized or banned altogether. Beware of people that promise you otherwise.
In this section we look at industry-accepted standard SEO practices and technology that are either recommended by the major search engines or that these techniques and related technologies are what the industry is doing, in the cause of better, more relevant searches by the users. Briefly, here are accepted and recommended techniques and/or technology that are sanctioned or approved by the engines and that are thouroughly enforced at Rank for $ales:
* The proper use of the title tag
* The proper use of the description tag
* The proper use of the robots.txt file
* The proper use of the keywords tag
* The proper use of the H1, H2 and H3 tags
* Good body text, keyword-rich marketing copy
* The proper use of a sitemap, helping your users
* Submitting once to the major search engines
* The proper use of internal links to your inward pages
* The proper use of text links, recommended over picture links
Remember that the Google Page Rank (PR) is an important measure that will determine where in the Google search engine and others, where your site will rank. Google relies heavily on heir complex algorithm to precisely calculate a site’s page rank factor that will directly determine all of the above. There are two ways that Rank for $ales strongly recommends to achieve high PR: Put a lot of informative content on your site and go into a reciprocal link exchange program. Nothing beats a good reciprocal link exchange program to increase page rank in Google. Click here to get all the information.
The Proper Use Of The Title Tag
Correctly using the title tag is as important as ever. More and more today, the major search engines give a tremendous weighting factor to the title tag. On top of informing your site visitors what the page is all about, it also helps the search engines get a better understanding of the topic of that page and what it should expect to see on it.
What’s more, the title tag is a great place to write that important keyword or key phrase that you are optimizing that page for! If your page’s main topic is ‘blue widgets’, then you should call the title tag Blue Widgets. As is usually the case with a lot of things, in SEO, keeping things as simple as possible usually will go a long way too. If you are using a W3C standards-compliant HTML editor as it is strongly recommended, the TITLE tag is always located under the HEAD tag and that is where you need to write it, along with your main keyword or key phrase.
The Proper Use Of The Description Tag
When you do a search on Google, after you have seen the title of the page, you will see a short description, usually of only a line or two that will further inform you of what to expect from that page. To be effective, always write a short but descriptive sentence or two in your descriptive tag. It is also a good idea to use at least once your main keyword or key phrase, as some search engines still look at the contents of some of the META tags (the description tag is part of the meta tags).
On a W3C standards-compliant HTML editor, the description tag is always located under the TITLE tag. Here is how it looks:
The Proper Use Of The Keywords Tag
In the early days of the Internet, placing your keywords in the meta keywords tag would almost be a certain recipe to success. However, due to such increasing abuse and spam techniques used by many unscrupulous Webmasters and site owners, today the only search engine that still looks at them is Inktomi. Since it only takes a minute or two to write them, you might as well do, since it won’t hurt your rankings. Just don’t spend too much time on them or over-emphasize their importance, as they are almost dead.
On a W3C standards-compliant HTML editor, the keywords tag is always located under the descriptive tag. Here is how it looks:
The Proper Use Of The H1, H2 And H3 Tags
After the TITLE tag, if there is one place where the search engines will reward you, it is with the use of the H1 and H2 tags. Simply put, H1 and H2 tags are your main headers when you need to place a headline or you simply need to write the main topic of that page that your viewers will read. Placing that headline in bold (H1 and H2 tags are ALWAYS in bold) H1 and H2 tags will signal the search engines that whatever is in there is real important.
Almost invariably, I always make strong use of H1’s and H2’s and the sites I optimize usually rank very well in the major search engines.
Good Body Text And Keyword-Rich Marketing Copy
In real estate, it is ‘Location, Location, Location’. In SEO, it is ‘Content, Content, Content’. The more text and the more content you have on a given page, the more the search engines will see all that content and the more your page will rank high. It’s just as simple as that. Beware of anybody that tells you differently.
For that reason, stay away from Flash technology or site designs that make heavy use of graphics in any way. Always remember that all search engines are ‘picture blind’ and cannot see any photographs, pictures or graphics on any of your pages! Write good copy, keyword-rich sales copy that will read well, both to your site visitors AND the search engines. The more content you have, the better.
The Proper Use Of A Sitemap, Helping Your Users
The sitemap is still the search engine’s ‘best friend’. When designing your sitemap, always make certain that all your files are in it and that they are all linked to that sitemap. Search engines today are programmed to encounter sitemaps ‘by default’ and if you have one, you are increasing your chances that all your pages will be spidered (or crawled) by the search engines.
Ideally, all your site’s files are supposed to be in the search engine’s database, for the best visibility on the Web. The proper use of a sitemap will greatly increase that visibility. Also, you should always call that filename sitemap.html (all in one name- avoid using a hyphen or underscore). Also, be sure to link your sitemap to your homepage.
Submitting Once To The Major Search Engines
Never submit your site more than once to the search engines. Today, most modern search engines such as Google, AltaVista and many more have automated crawlers (or spiders) that visit the Web and index new or updated files and then include them in their databases. It is also strongly recommended that you include your site to the Open Directory Project (ODP) or DMOZ. Google uses that directory for its main index of categories and it will usually benefit your site to be listed in it. The ODP is a free directory.
The Proper Use Of Links To Your Inward Pages
One important technique that some Webmasters still neglect to follow is the use of inter-linking techniques used throughout your site. Your inner pages are as important as your homepage or your products or services pages. All of these pages can be used as legitimate ‘doorway’ pages that the search engines will like to see and will usually reward you for using them. For an example of what a good inter-linked page looks like, simply look at this one.
If you have a page on blue widgets, it should also be linked to your green and red widgets pages too, as they are all related together. Following these simple techniques will usually give you some ‘good mileage’ as far as visibility is concerned.
The Proper Use Of Text Links
If at all possible, you should always use text links over graphics or Java-based links that the search engines cannot see. If you really have to use graphics or Java-based hyperlinks to the rest of your site, make sure you include a ‘bottom-of-page’ footer text link menu that the search engines will love and properly index your page in their databases. If you have a large site that is composed of many sections, divide all those sections into smaller ones, using ‘families’ of footer menus that will be different from one section to another. It’s a bit more work, but you are significantly increasing your chances that the engines will reward your site in the rankings.
Conclusion
As I have said so many times before, search engine optimization and positioning is a science as well as an art. What really counts are the results you will get from your efforts. If you carefully implement all the tips and techniques that are in this article, your website should rank well in the search engines and your Web-based business should be a success.
Be extremely careful of anybody that will tell you otherwise. Also, bear in mind that for a site to rank well, it can usually take anywhere from 60 to 90 days and sometimes more. Calculate a minimum of 2 to 3 Google monthly updates, which will set you off to at least three months away, in most cases. I have even seen delays of up to 4 to 6 months after the site was launched. What can speed up things here is a reciprocal link exchange program.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Pursuit of high search engine ranking has other marketing benefits.
If you run an on-line business or operate a website in support of your traditional small business, you have probably desired at some time to improve your ranking in search engine results. Wouldn’t we all like to be ranked #1 in Google for a term related to our business? Of course we would. The traffic could be staggering, and your business would gain considerable exposure.
Of course it is not that easy to do, since everyone else in the world who has a website wants the same thing. You’ve probably read articles that tell you all about the tips and tricks of climbing the Google ladder, and you’ve also read articles that tell you to forget about it. They say its simply too hard and will require too much effort to build your website up to that point.
In this writer’s opinion, they are both wrong. You should pursue a high ranking in Google with all of your available resources, but not necessarily with the goal of hitting the top of the search engine mountain. You’ll see why after a quick review of the two most commonly mentioned tips to increasing your ranking in Google.
Building Relevant Inbound Links
When somebody else’s website links to yours, they are essentially ‘voting’ for your website. They are telling visitors to their website that in their opinion, it would be worthwhile for them to visit your site as well, as it may be of interest to them. Google counts relevant inbound links in your favor, as they believe that the more people willing to give your site a ‘vote of confidence’ through a link must be an indication that your site is worthwhile. Building relevant inbound links can be accomplished through direct communication with other website owners, or through the practice of article writing.
Articles (like this one) carry a resource box at the end that contains a link back to the author’s website. If your article seems worthwhile to another business website owner, they may post it for their readers. In doing so they generate an automatic link to your site as their way of saying ‘thanks for the information’.
You’ll notice that I keep using the word ‘relevant’. Links from non-relevant sites or from pages that contain only links and no valuable content may actually downgrade your site ranking in Google, as it may be perceived as ‘SPAM’.
Establishing Free, Relevant Content
Your site won’t rank very well if it only contains one page filled with sales pitches for your product or service. The Internet is about information, and to improve your ranking you need to offer free information on your chosen topic to your visitors. Some people do this in the form of articles from themselves or other authors. The more content that you have, the more likely people are to find something valuable on your site, hence the more likely you are to rank well in search engine results.
Which brings us back to why you should pursue a high Google ranking. The reason lies in the tactics mentioned above. Simply put, the process of establishing links to your website from other quality sites related to your topic, and the fact that your site has quality content on it, will greatly improve your chances of making sales to your customers through your website, regardless of whether or not you rank well on Google. Your efforts will be well placed if you focus on links and content. A number of quality inbound links can generate significant, highly targeted traffic to your website even without a high ranking search engine listing.
Conclusion
The effects of pursuing inbound links and relevant content on your website’s traffic will be positive, regardless of your ranking on Google or any other search engine. So go ahead and try to drive your site as high as possible in the Google ranking. You will certainly build a solid foundation for your website along the way.
Author Bio:
Will Dylan is the Author of ‘Small Business Big Marketing’ a powerful e-book for small businesses available through his website http://www.marketingyoursmallbusiness.com/. Will also offers article and news release writing services. You can contact Will at askwill@marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
Pay Per Click Advertising
If you are using pay per click advertising, I don’t need to tell you that it can get very expensive if you have a lot of unnecessary click throughs. In this article I will explain how to screen your visitors and how to apply it to your pay per click advertising campaign, so that you can screen your visitors before they click through.
How It Works
To minimize the amount of unnecessary click throughs, we are going to talk about a screening technique that is used in copywriting. A good copywriter has the ablity to screen the serious individuals from the test pilots, before the sale is initially made.
By using this screening technique you will dramatically decrease the amount of refunds that you could be receiving. In this case, you need to be specific about your product or service without giving too many details, this will eliminate unnecessary click throughs.
When it comes time to develop an ad that best describes your offer, you need to use precise wording. If you use any ambiguous words, phrases or statements in your ads, you will confuse the viewer, making them either click through or leave. You need to keep in mind that every click through is costing you money, so you need to make sure that you are targeting your market and that each of your visitors are qualified.
Applying The Headline
When placing a pay per click advertisement there are two things that you need to pay attention to, the headline and the description. The headline is used to grab their attention, build their curiousity and force them to read on. The difficult part is that the pay per click ads only allow you a limited amount of characters, usually up to 50. Your attention grabbing headline will end up being only three or four words. You need to make your headline jump out at the viewer, but at the same time, you need to be specific.
One of the biggest mistakes I often see, is that people use their business name for the headline of their pay per click advertisement. A business name is not going to grab their attention or motivate them to read the description. For example, let me ask you which headline would grab your attention and motivate you to read the description, “Elites Marketing” or “Earn $47 – $270 Per Sale”. Do you see the difference between the two headlines and how specific the second one was?
Applying The Description
As far as the description goes, you have a little more to work with, unless you are using Google’s Adwords. Google’s Adwords gives you two lines and each line only allows up to 35 characters. You will need to be as specific and descriptive as you can. The description is very crucial, and it will determine whether or not your visitor will initially click through.
Let me give you another example, now which description is precise in wording and is descriptive enough to screen your visitor, “You can join our Two Tier Associate Program at no cost or obligation”, or “Snowball in cash by promoting info-marketing products. Join for Free!” I hope you picked the second description!
The first description, “You can join our Two Tier Associate Program at no cost or obligation” is vague and wide open. This description does not describe what kind of product or service they would be promoting or kind of associate program I am offering is, pay per lead, pay per click, pay per sale, or two tier. You don’t want to use a description that is too vague, that is how you get a lot of unnecessary click throughs.
On the other hand, the second description, “Snowball in cash by promoting marketing info-products. Join for Free!” is very clear and concise. Even though the description did not say what kind of associate program it was, in the headline it was clear. It said, “Earn $47 – $270 Per Sale.” Moreover, I was able to tell my visitor that they’d be promoting information marketing products and was free to participate. I was also able to hit them with a couple psychological triggers, “Snowball” and “Cash”.
Conclusion
To screen your visitors more effectively, you need to choose keywords that are relevant to your product or service and that target your market. If you select keywords or phrases that are too general, you will still have a lot of unnecessary click throughs. You can only screen so much, so don’t select inappropriate keywords or phrases when starting your pay per click advertisement campaign. Take your time and brainstorm for the appropriate keywords and phrases that best desribes your product or service.
Author Bio:
Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.elitesmarketing.com/. You can start earning cash today by joining our FREE Two Tier Associate Program and make $45 – $270 per sale hhttp://www.elitesmarketing.com/assoc/.
Banner Exchanges – Are They Useful?
For those who don’t know, a banner exchange is a service that offers to show your banner ad on other sites if you show their ads on your’s. They often have thousands of sites in their networks so you can get your banner shown in a lot of places. They will offer an “exchange” rate – the most common is probably 2:1. This means that for every two banners you show on your site, they will show one of your’s on other peoples. You can get better exchange rates such as 4:3 or 5:4.
On the surface, they seem like a good idea and, because they are free to join, there is no real need to be critical. However, it’s important that you have a good idea of the kind of response that you are likely to receive.
For a new site, they are pretty pointless. If you taken into account that you are likely to receive a 1% clkick through rate on your banner (and it will usually be much less) then they are not going to drive any traffic to your site. Using the above exchange rate of 2:1 you would need to show 200 banners on your site to get one new visitor – showing 200 banners earns you 100 of your’s shown and at a 1% click through rate, that’s one visitor. Let’s say you get 50 000 pageviews per month on your site, you would get your banner shown 25 000 times on other sites and get 250 new visitors. This looks OK but a 1% click through rate is often hard to achieve so this should be treated as a maximum.
The other issue is that Banner Exchanges are often not very well targeted. This means that your banner may not be shown on sites that match your’s. Therefore, the visitors you do get may just be surfers rather than potential clients. Most Banner Exchanges these days do offer some form of targeting but it’s never going to be as targeted as it would be if you just approached a site and offered to exchange banners at a 1:1 rate.
Having said all that, they do have some good points. Firstly, they are free which is always a good thing. Secondly, they will get you a bit of extra traffic assuming you already have some. Thirdly, they do offer some value in terms of branding – even though only one person in a hundred may click on the banner, many more will actually see it and, if you have a good banner, remember your name.
To sum up, Banner Exchanges are of value as part of your overall marketing strategy but are generally not the way to “get your site going”.
Author Bio:
Sean Burns is the author of the WebmastersReference.com Newsletter – http://www.webmastersreference.com/newsletter. More than five years of experience in site design, marketing, income generation, search engine optimization and more is passed on to subscribers – hype free. Sign up today to get real information of real value to webmasters.
Big Site? Make The Most Of It On Google – Intro.
For many people a five or six page web site is all they need or want, but for others, selling services and products on the internet, a hundred page site is barely adequate ‘ if you’re one of those companies then here are some tips on making the most of your site on Google and other deep search engines.
One of the sites we manage is 520 pages packed with content and informative articles. It has some 10 / 12 levels of pages in its structure and we became aware that Google only indexed 126 of those 520 pages, what was going on?
Maximising Each Page
We worked diligently with the web site owner to optimise each page, ensuring it had a unique and the page content was rich in the KEYWORDS for that topic, for instance if you?re trying to get onto Google with ?content management systems? and the phrase ?content management systems? does not appear on the page in HTML text then you won?t hit the top 1000!! Similarly if the phrase ?content management system? appears lots you will still fail because Google sees ?system? and ?systems? as 2 totally separate words
Remember, each page has a , , , and ALT TAGS if you, or the designer has simply duplicated another page, as a template, in the design all your pages will have the same attributes as far as the spider is concerned.
Spider Depth
Most spiders do not index below level 3 and therefore they do not find what may be very important pages at all. In addition we noticed with Google Page Ranking that the Index Page was 5/10, a level 2 page on the same site was 4/10 and a level 3 page was 3/10. Presumably pages beyond level 3 are considered so insignificant that the spider has been programmed to ignore them.
In addition the spider was stopping dead at drop down menus and graphic links it could not move beyond. Spiders essentially follow HTML text links and that’s about it. If you stick to that rule you won’t go too far wrong.
Our challenge was therefore to bring every page, no matter where it was in the site, to a level 3 position at least ‘ without changing the structure of the site itself, so the spider would index it and the page ranking would be higher. This would give us 520 marketable, optimised pages rather that 126.
The solution was quite simple. A site map ‘ we simply spent a few hours setting up a site map with a link from the index page (making the site map level 2) and then an HTML text link to every page on the site, making every page on the site at least level 3.
The next time the site was spidered by Google, there it was, 520 content rich optimised pages and an increase in traffic of 1000%.
Big sites, make the most of them, don’t keep your content hidden under a bushel!!
Author Bio:
John Saxon is technical director of site-pro limited a site offering free tips, tools and articles for web site optimisation ‘.
To Gogle, Or Not To Gogle?
A while back I was posting an article submitted by one of our regular authors on LilEngine.com and I did it a bit faster than I normally would. I was in a hurry to catch an appointment and was already running late. While posting the article I tripped on something that would change my view on mistakes forever.
In my haste I made a mistake in the article’s title, yes a misspelling, just as I have purposely misspelt Google Search Engine as Gogle Search Engine in the title of this article to clue you in on its content. Weirdly enough the mistake in the title I posted slipped by unnoticed and eventually got pushed off the homepage and into our archives.
If you follow the course of your content pages after posting them they usually go into hiding for a few days and then resurface with varying placement depending on their content and other variables. Every now and again you will have some page on your site that attracts large amounts of traffic compared to some of your other pages. This page inevitably grabs your attention and this is what happened to me.
I noticed a large increase in the daily traffic to http://web.archive.org/web/20040605194628/http://www.webmoves.net/blog// and started analyzing the logs to find the culprit. Now, I describe it as a large increase in traffic as opposed to a large spike in traffic as this traffic gain did not suddenly appear then disappear. It was a stable increase in traffic and was funneled to our site by the Gogle Search Engine :-). It so followed that the page that was responsible for this flood was the same page with the mistake and it was showing up as #1 in Google for this keyword misspelling.
Finding Common Misspellings
It is pretty easy to come up with misspellings for your targeted keywords, however, incorporating them into your content may not be as easy. With a little imagination you can come up with several methods to keep your content legitimate for your users and the search engines.
Using the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool and Google Search Results you can decide which misspellings get the most searches and which are highly competitive hence which ones would be worth your while to optimize for.
Here’s how you do it.
Use the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool to see how many searches there are for the misspelling. If this number is satisfactory for you then do a Gogle Search for the misspelling and see how many results Gogle has for this keyword. If this number is too high then there may be too much competition for this keyword and you might want to try another.
Summary
People will always make mistakes and these will include misspellings. If you can reach out further to your target market by incorporating words that they may misspell to find your site, in a tasteful manner, then gearing pages of your website for misspellings should be considered when optimizing your website.
Author: A Duncan
www.lilengine.com
SEO Defined
The true definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be stated as a highly specialized process of building a successful website. We say successful because if a commercial website cannot be found in the major search engines, it is not successful, it just isn’t doing it’s job. SEO directly addresses the need for a website to attract new and targeted visitors, who in turn will convert into buying customers.
Fact: About 90% of all new visitors to a web site found it using the major search engines such as Google or, search directories such as Yahoo! Now SEO professionals and specialists alike are closely accustomed to acquiring top-level search engine results for all their clients. Priority placement and top rankings is a daily, on-going struggle when you are a professional SEO specialist. The SEO field, as a whole, needs to keep up with ever-changing technology and also has to be familiar with other web site marketing techniques such as banner ads, pay-per-click programs and even some offline advertising options.
After a careful industry study, every survey has taught us that each web site competes in a different, segmented market. You could say that some are probably less competitive and others are surely more competitive. But each and every website targets very different customers in very different markets. Some have a more local scope or orientation, others target either national or global markets. In Rank for $ales’s own experience, “the classic one size fits all promotional packages” are usually termed as a “one size fits none” scenario. We have been involved in the professional Search Engine Optimization field since 1997.
Our initial approach is to custom-design a unique Internet marketing strategy that will work for all our clients’ sales goals, market segments and their advertising budgets. Rank for Sales works as an important team inside our client’s sales operations. We diligently work with every department and all concerned to reach their common goals.
Traditional advertising in the brick-and-mortar version of any business model is a proven method of promotion for any business. It has worked since the roaring twenties and continues to work today. Now the Internet is certainly no exception, but achieving a high return (ROI) for your online advertising dollar can be a very expensive, trial and error proposal if not done correctly. A good SEO professional firm can help you choose the most effective programs for your needs. The best programs that will work in your company.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Introduction
Recognizing, identifying and requesting reciprocal links is a bit more complicated than it used to be in the past. Rank for $ales knows that one important ingredient to a successful SEO reciprocal link exchange campaign, particularly in the case of Google and its PageRank algorithm, is increasing the quantity of web sites providing plain-text reciprocal links to your site. Web sites with related and similar content will provide more benefit to your own site’s rankings than will several links from less relevant sources, wich proves again the importance of link and content relevancy.
The unique goals of a search engine optimization professional then lies in the precise task of identifying relevant pages that will link to your site, effectively yielding you quality, inbound links. One must be careful to not fall into the ever-growing quantity of link farms or web sites that offer little, if any content that is of value to your site visitors or to the engines.
How To Start On The Right Foot
Initiate your reciprocal link exchange program by developing a site theme, topic or title that you will use as part of your link-request invitations. Many sites limit the length and syntax of this variable so try to keep it short, ideally less than 25 characters and make it directly relevant to your site’s content. Because most sites use this theme or title to hyperlink to your site, be sure to include the one or two keywords or a short keyphrase that is of the most value to your optimization program.
The exact keywords that link to your site are just as valuable as the link itself when determining the overall impact of a backlink on search engine rankings. When that is done, develop a site description in a manner similar to that above. Try to keep your description under 150 characters as some online submission sites could eliminate some of your most important keywords after that point. When writing your site’s description, try not to make superlative statements and don’t risk sounding spammy by simply listing some keywords placed here and there.
Another important suggestion for your initial preparation phase is to devise a way of recording your requests and submissions. You will soon realize that, like us, an effective reciprocal link exchange program that really works can leave a lot of email trails that can rapidly overwhelm you in a short time. At Rank for $ales, we use a complex spreadsheet system we developed wich is tailored for each of our clients. Our system basically identifies the inbound links and URL’s and the dates on which they were originally submitted. It’s not totally imperative, but accurately recording each link partner will help prevent submitting to the same site more than once, thus reducing any wasted time as well as almost eliminating the potential for upsetting your potential link partners.
Determining Potential Link Partners
Where do you go to find content-related and industry-related web sites that will link with your site? Well, you can start by searching a popular engine such as Google or another, and entering key phrases such as add a site, suggest a site, add link etc. Be certain to request exact search results as these key phrases are often included on small directories and categorized as such on certain link pages. We have found on many occasions that this method will return sites at which you’ll submit your site through an online form itemized by category, title, description and other relevant information.
Next, your research should concentrate on key phrases such as industry links, where the word industry is an important keyword related to your site’s industry or field of interest. You might discover that this search technique returns more results for smaller linked pages that will require you to email the webmaster for possible inclusion. Start writing a list of the sites you find relevant to yours and then you can come back later.
Sparsing And Fine-Tuning Your List
Keep in mind that, of all the web sites you have written on that list, not all might be willing to provide a link to your site. Their reasons or possible objections could be personal or otherwise- whatever the reason, you should not insist or become offended at a refusal. Just remember that a good link exchange program can help you by a large factor in the Google Page Rank algorithm. You should install the Google Toolbar on your browser if it’s not done yet, so that you can view PageRank when visiting any web site. Do not submit your site for inclusion on any page with a PageRank of two or lower as links from these sites might actually have a negative effect on your optimization campaign.
Your next step is to determine whether a search engine crawler (or spider) will be able to discover the link as one going to your site or web page. A true backlink is one that directs from visible text directly to your site. Always keep in mind that a text link is ten times more efficient than any gif or jpg image link. Search engines cannot see or read images like humans can. What they crave on is pure, old-fashioned text. Now many small online directories use scripts to organize their data. So instead of actually providing a link to http://www.yoursite.com/ they effectively format their directory to include a number of links in the form of http://theirsite.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?12345. Though click through traffic is directed to the same place with both formats, we found on most occasions that the latter provides no real value to your optimization program per se. As a hint, a link that opens as a new page from the referring site is a valid link.
The Actual Link Request Process Or Invitation
On many industry-related web sites and others, most have what is called a links page or partners page, such as our own web site wich you can see at the bottom of any of our pages on this web site. Many links pages of these sites allow you to submit your site’s information to the webmaster through an online form. When completing these forms be sure to provide complete and accurate information. Evaluate your options when confidential contact information such as address, phone number and email address is optional. You don’t want your name or email address put on any solicitation list or spam-related sites. However, providing a valid email address allows means for the webmaster to contact you should they have questions or comments concerning your site. You could also consider creating a temporary email address that you would use for link submissions exclusively.
In the on-going development of your reciprocal link exchange program (RLEP), you’ll come across some links pages that do not display clear instructions for submitting your site. Some of these sites might not be true-to-form link pages but rather lists of personal favorites or similar theme-category web sites with little relevancy to your site. In either case, it doesn’t hurt to ask to have your site reviewed. Just remember that relevancy is the name of the game in RLEP and to that end, write the webmaster a basic letter that includes your site’s URL, title as well as the URL of the page on which you would like inclusion. Many webmasters are in charge of multiple sites and might not know to which site you’re referring too so make certain there are no mistakes or misunderstandings. Be concise yet thorough with the information you provide in that email in order to minimize the effort it takes the targeted webmaster to summarize and consequently list your web site on his or her’s. Begin your email with a friendly greeting and end with a statement inviting the addressee to contact you with any questions concerning your site. A polite and personal message is less likely to be confused with spam-reciprocal-link requests, as most webmasters today are constantly flooded with spam messages.
Polish Off And Perfect Your Strategy
The last step is your most important: personally thank all positively responding webmasters who agreed to your reciprocal link invitation. Regardless of any frustration or confusion you may encounter in the process of your link exchange program, always remember that other websites are actually doing you a favor by posting your link, even if you post their’s on your site.
Author Bio:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
SEO Tips
Did you know that, before search engine users visit a specific Web site, they already have made four separate and distinct choices:
Choice number one: They choose to use the Internet to find a specific product or service, to research an issue of interest to them or solve a problem, as much in their professional careers as in their personal lives.
Choice number two: They choose one of the five to six major search engines on the Internet to launch their search, the most popular by far being Google.
Choice number three: They choose a particular keyword or phrase as the basis of their search, trying to narrow it down as best they can.
Choice number four: They discriminate among the first ten search results on the same, first page. Then they take their final decision as to wich web site (or company) will get their business.
These are your ultimate targeted site visitors. These web visitors are already fifty to sixty percent of the way toward reaching a final buying decision as a result of having taken the initiative to use a good search engine to investigate or research a specific product or service. This is exactly the visitor that you want to attract to your web site. These are real, serious buyers.
Your Ultimate Strategy
Did you know that, after investing thousands, sometimes hundred of thousands of dollars developing a Web site, businesses often discover that the site is invisible in the major search properties. Failing to take your Web site’s search engine and directory visibility into consideration when making site development decisions is an untimely and very expensive mistake. As a direct consequence, companies must either reinvest in a post-launch redesign of their site, or accept the extremely limited results that they will achieve with their site, if any.
By recognizing both the importance and the need of search engine optimization in the development of your Web site, you hold a significant advantage over your competition. As an example, after making the decision to implement a website positioning strategy, one Rank for Sales client now maintains a sizeable advantage over its competitors. Boasting significantly more and higher rankings in every major search engines including key players such as Google, AltaVista and Yahoo! Because of their decision to implement a website optimization strategy, our client has since closed a number of new business deals through search, including a recent $1.1 million sale that they acquired directly through a targeted search referral.
Users of Internet search engines are on a “mission” to solve a “problem.” How quickly they are able to find an answer to their problem is directly related to customer satisfaction. How quickly they are able to find your website, if they are searching for you by name, is directly related to their opinion of your brand. Where and if your website places itself in a priority position on top of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) is entirely up to your site’s optimization features, or lack thereof. So a lifetime relationship with your brand is very literally at stake every time someone conducts a query via a search engine.
Divide And Conquer
Did you know that, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a very controversial and hotly disputed subject and is actually a discipline finding itself in a constant state of movement. Major search engines such as Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista and the others are relentlessly changing their search engine ranking algorithms and related criteria on which they determine what factors they consider important for delivering the most relevant results to user search queries.
These criterias have an extremely powerful influence on your search engine rankings. What’s more, partnerships change, new search properties emerge, mergers or buyouts happen and others disappear altogether. All of these changes can directly impact your search engine rankings. Fortunately, there are a number of helpful resources where you can learn more about increasing and maintaining your website’s search engine rankings and keep up-to-date on the latest trends and changes in the search engine industry.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
