Writing Powerful Key Phrases – Introduction
In this article, you will learn the proper techniques on how to write powerful key phrases for the search engines and the importance of good relevant text. But first, we need to know how to properly research these key phrases, ensuring they are the right ones. You cannot write efficient key phrases if you don’t know what they are.
Identification comes first. Action comes second. In case some of you still have some reservations or doubts on the importance of key phrases, let’s start by defining exactly what these key phrases are and try to learn how to work with them in writing strong, key phrase-rich text that is relevant for your web site.
First, The Importance Of Key Phrases
If chosen correctly, your key phrases will truly yield the return on investment you need. It will help transform any web site from a static one to one that pulls in qualified and targeted visitors, wich, in turn, should become buyers. I will even include a case study, where I have a client who manufactures precision-engineered, special teflon parts that are designed for the aerospace industry.
When I reviewed his “antiquated” key phrases, the first thing I discovered was they weren’t targeted in any way and not specific enough. For example two of their key phrases were: teflon parts and parts for airplanes!
Upon initial observation, one might think the key phrase choices seemed logical. After all, they are in the aerospace industry and they do manufacture teflon parts. However, years of optimizing sites for strong key phrases have taught me to never assume anything. The careful research and identification of the exact key phrases needed comes before any other process. It comes before the writing of your copy, before inserting your Meta Tags, before everything.
So, to write powerful, key phrase-rich text, you need to identify the exact key phrases that, number One: will specifically target what product or service you offer, and number Two: are those key phrases exactly what your average searcher types in when he or she needs a specific product or service like what your site offers?
If a person optimizes a web site for the wrong key phrases or if that person guesses or assumes in any way what key phrases people are searching for without better evidence, in such an instance the chances for failure are very high. To proove to you that this is right, the fact that one of the main key phrase in this site was “airplane parts”, the owner would regularly get requests, either via email, FAX or phone for airplane parts which had nothing to do with HIS business.
In one such case, they received an RFP (Request for Proposal) for a part that goes in the landing gear of large airplanes such as Boeing’s 747. The only applications of the parts manufactured by my client goes into the security openings and closings of most of the passenger and cockpit doors on medium-sized aircraft! So you can readily see the importance of carefully researching and using the right key phrases when optimizing a commercial web site.
Developing powerful marketing copy with the wrong key phrases can lead you to situations like the one described above. Once I carefully identified and selected the right key phrases, my teflon parts manufacturer client went from one to two Internet clients a month to two or three a week. Needless to say, the work done is appreciated and, a year later, that company is still doing very well in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).
The Wordtracker Professional Search Tool
If you are like most people, you might find that searching through various databases on your typical working day could be very time consuming, to say the least. Instead, what we use at Rank for $ales is the Wordtracker professional search tool. Today, WordTracker is the best and the most popular fee-based keyword and key phrase analyzer on the Internet and is used by most serious search engine optimization professionals we know of. We use it daily and we have no idea how we could ever achieve the work we do without such an important resource.
WordTracker is based on meta search queries made by ordinary people searching the web everyday, wich means that the keyword and key phrase combinations found are much more reliable than the pay-per-click listings generated by the Overture suggestion tool. Over time, we have also found that the data generated is also more objective. Now the people at Wordtracker know that you should not always rely on the most competitive keyword and search query combinations.
These are more or less dictated by large corporations that can afford to allocate much bigger budgets on various search engine marketing and sales campaigns. We recommend that it just might be as sensible to optimize for less popular key phrases or search terms for your industry!
Let me give you some general rules in the careful research of key phrase brainstorming. Number One, you should use key phrases your target audience will readily understand. Your sales and marketing division may or may not agree with you on this. However, at all times, you should remember that you want to carefully identify and use only key phrases that only your audience will respond to, and not nice-sounding, marketing-hype words that will please your sales department, but, like in our aerospace client example, will pull in the wrong audience.
A note about “one-word” key phrases:- First, if it’s only one word, it cannot be called a key phrases to begin with! Typically, single keywords are too competitive to be worth anything and chances are you will be wasting a lot of time, for little return in the end. Using Word Tracker, after you have carefully identified and selected your right key phrases, it’s time to start writing the body of your text.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Make Online Marketing An Effective Sales Tool
All businesses should have some kind of Internet presence, if only to help the occasional Web searcher find the phone number to a nearby brick-and-mortar store. Like most corporations, many HVAC and sheet metal companies today want their Web sites to go beyond a simple online brochure, but they also need to get a decent return on investment to justify operating, promoting and maintaining an engaging Web presence. Here are some ways to ensure your Web site stands out.
An effective Web site not only needs to be attractive, it has to be easy for visitors to find and use. It has to create interest in a company’s products or services. Ideally, it will make visitors want to buy, or at least call a company for more information.
Thanks mostly to software and a growing online-marketing industry, companies now have full control over how and where they appear online, and company officials can know exactly how many people come to their Web site, where they come from, what they do and how much they buy.
Internet Exposure
Some online customers know a company’s Web address and type it into their browser directly. When that happens, it’s an indicator of good branding, which is mostly established through off-line marketing efforts. The best way to catch this valuable traffic is by selecting a good Web address, sometimes called a “URL.” Preferably, the address will include the company’s business name or a brand name people commonly use when referring to the company (usually without the “Inc.” and “Corp.” attached). Addresses should avoid hyphens, if possible, and officials should buy similar, available Web addresses that people might type in when looking for the company. These additional Web address can then instantly redirect visitors to the main Web site.
To capture those potential customers who don’t know a company well enough to type in a direct address, a Web site needs to appear in online databases called “search engines.” Popular examples include Yahoo, Google and Alta Vista. A search engine scans the Internet for Web sites that contain a certain word or phrase.
To maximize online marketing efforts, a corporation’s Web site should appear in the No. 1 position when someone types in the company’s name. Ideally, the Web site should appear prominently when a visitor types in any phrase that relates to what the business sells. Some manufacturing companies don’t bother pursuing good search-engine listings, figuring their potential clients are not searching for information or products online.
No Need To Guess
But no company needs to guess whether people are looking for them online. Software and Web applications are available that can tell officials approximately how many Web users are searching for their products. One of the most popular Web-based tools is WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com). A one-day subscription is available for $7. This software gives its users a list of how many people search for a phrase. These statistics can give Web site owners an idea of which phrases are more searched than others in a particular industry. (See Figure 1)
Appearing under any phrases in a search engine is a bit more complicated than it looks. Most search engines provide two types of listings for searches: sponsored listings and free listings. Companies can appear in both of these types of listings.
Exposure in the free listings is determined by the search engine itself, which searches online for Web sites to index in its database and then determines, based on a Web site’s code and content, where it should appear in the free list of results for particular phrases. This method explains why most Web sites appear when someone types in their business name. The Web site content usually contains that name multiple times, basically telling the search engines that the name of the company is an important phrase for the Web site.
There are ways to encourage a search engine to see the Web site as important to other phrases beyond the company name. This is called optimizing a Web site for search engines and an entire online-marketing industry has developed to help companies optimize their Web site for free search listings in Google (www.google.com) and other search engines.
Pay For Placement
Most companies, however, direct their online-marketing efforts towards a simpler task: paying to appear under the sponsored listing section in multiple search engines. There are many places online to pay for placement, but the two most common search engines offering paid placement are Google and Overture (www.overture.com), which serves as a distributor of paid listings to the search engines such as Yahoo and MSN. Both these engines let Web site owners bid on a per-click cost for a sponsored ad and let the company determine what phrases it would like that ad to appear under. Web site owners then pay every time a user clicks on their sponsored ad.
WordTracker software also helps subscribers know how much a particular phrase costs on the search engine Overture. (See Figure 2)
Although search engines are the most popular and easy way to increase a Web site’s online exposure, companies can also buy “banner ads” – ads that appear across the top of a Web page – and listings in industry-related Web sites and newsletters. Associations, press publications, and related industry or online-resource Web sites offer advertising to qualified buyers in Web site directories, through banners on front and internal pages, and within their online newsletters.
Tracking Traffic, Volume And Behavior
Once a Web site has a decent online presence in general search engines and industry-related Web sites, traffic will increase and, hopefully, so will customer leads and sales. But companies don’t need to rely on hope to determine if their Web site is bringing in buying traffic. Web sites are hosted on servers that track basic information about site traffic in what’s called a “server log.” Software is available to help companies compile this log information and organize it into reports that can tell a company where users specifically come from, what pages those users go to once they enter the Web site, and how many of those users buy products or request more information on the Web site, among other things.
The amount of details available about traffic volume and behavior within a Web site is dependent on the software used to compile that information. One of the largest Web site server-log software is WebTrends (www.webtrends.com), available by subscription in several versions, depending on a Web site’s statistical needs. There are, however, hundreds of software packages available, each offering companies something different in compiling capabilities. Some compile reports that indicate general trends of traffic volume and behavior, while others can tell companies details like how much they paid for an ad in Overture, which products those Overture visitors bought online, and then what the specific return on investment was for that phrase and ad in the Overture engine for a month’s time. Other software helps companies gather information about visitors, which can then help the company compile reports about a specific visitor’s behavior on the Web site each time he or she visits. Online bookseller Amazon.com is one well-known example.
Once a company chooses the best software for its needs, reports can be generated to answer questions like:
Is the marketing attracting qualified traffic?
What Web sites refer buyers and leads?
How does traffic move through the Web site?
What pages do users typically leave from?
What percentages of users buy or request information on the first visit?
How much does it cost for every online lead or buyer?
Making Sales
Compiling and analyzing Web site statistics can only be effective if the Web site design and marketing has been done with goals in mind. Companies that want an effective Web site need to have a business and marketing plan for the site and not operate it haphazardly. If the Web site is more than just an online brochure, it can represent the company as a mini-business in a virtual world.
Most companies want online visitors to buy product or services from them, but that goal is typically too simplistic to be effective. Online-marketing research indicates that most first-time Web site visitors don’t purchase a product or service during their initial exposure to the Web site.
One commonly quoted figure estimates that on average, only 2 percent to 3 percent of Web site traffic will perform a “most-wanted-response” during a Web site visit, even if that response is not a purchase but a request for information or signing up for a newsletter. Web site goals can be even harder to determine when a company sells products through a distribution network.
Since most people need to return to a Web site multiple times before requesting information or making a purchase, some of the most effective goals for a Web site involve keeping the visitor engaged with useful information and capturing e-mails and names to entice visitors back to the Web site until they’re ready to buy.
The most common way to capture information is by offering an industry newsletter that provides valuable resources or information on a weekly or monthly basis. But contests, request-for-information forms, and free trials or products can also be good customer-retention goals for a Web site and can all inspire qualified leads to give an e-mail address, name or phone number.
Once a company establishes some activities for visitors, they can track the conversion rate between the total number of visitors and those that perform the desired actions on the Web site. If those goals are clearly established and analyzed, the information about how visitors find and interact with the Web site can justify changes in the marketing plan, content creation and Web site design. This information will also justify the costs of owning and operating the Web site, and can give companies hard figures about online lead costs and the costs of sales conversions.
Make Online Marketing An Effective Sales Tool
All businesses should have some kind of Internet presence, if only to help the occasional Web searcher find the phone number to a nearby brick-and-mortar store. Like most corporations, many HVAC and sheet metal companies today want their Web sites to go beyond a simple online brochure, but they also need to get a decent return on investment to justify operating, promoting and maintaining an engaging Web presence. Here are some ways to ensure your Web site stands out.
An effective Web site not only needs to be attractive, it has to be easy for visitors to find and use. It has to create interest in a company’s products or services. Ideally, it will make visitors want to buy, or at least call a company for more information.
Thanks mostly to software and a growing online-marketing industry, companies now have full control over how and where they appear online, and company officials can know exactly how many people come to their Web site, where they come from, what they do and how much they buy.
Internet Exposure
Some online customers know a company’s Web address and type it into their browser directly. When that happens, it’s an indicator of good branding, which is mostly established through off-line marketing efforts. The best way to catch this valuable traffic is by selecting a good Web address, sometimes called a “URL.” Preferably, the address will include the company’s business name or a brand name people commonly use when referring to the company (usually without the “Inc.” and “Corp.” attached). Addresses should avoid hyphens, if possible, and officials should buy similar, available Web addresses that people might type in when looking for the company. These additional Web address can then instantly redirect visitors to the main Web site.
To capture those potential customers who don’t know a company well enough to type in a direct address, a Web site needs to appear in online databases called “search engines.” Popular examples include Yahoo, Google and Alta Vista. A search engine scans the Internet for Web sites that contain a certain word or phrase.
To maximize online marketing efforts, a corporation’s Web site should appear in the No. 1 position when someone types in the company’s name. Ideally, the Web site should appear prominently when a visitor types in any phrase that relates to what the business sells. Some manufacturing companies don’t bother pursuing good search-engine listings, figuring their potential clients are not searching for information or products online.
No Need To Guess
But no company needs to guess whether people are looking for them online. Software and Web applications are available that can tell officials approximately how many Web users are searching for their products. One of the most popular Web-based tools is WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com). A one-day subscription is available for $7. This software gives its users a list of how many people search for a phrase. These statistics can give Web site owners an idea of which phrases are more searched than others in a particular industry. (See Figure 1)
Appearing under any phrases in a search engine is a bit more complicated than it looks. Most search engines provide two types of listings for searches: sponsored listings and free listings. Companies can appear in both of these types of listings.
Exposure in the free listings is determined by the search engine itself, which searches online for Web sites to index in its database and then determines, based on a Web site’s code and content, where it should appear in the free list of results for particular phrases. This method explains why most Web sites appear when someone types in their business name. The Web site content usually contains that name multiple times, basically telling the search engines that the name of the company is an important phrase for the Web site.
There are ways to encourage a search engine to see the Web site as important to other phrases beyond the company name. This is called optimizing a Web site for search engines and an entire online-marketing industry has developed to help companies optimize their Web site for free search listings in Google (www.google.com) and other search engines.
Pay For Placement
Most companies, however, direct their online-marketing efforts towards a simpler task: paying to appear under the sponsored listing section in multiple search engines. There are many places online to pay for placement, but the two most common search engines offering paid placement are Google and Overture (www.overture.com), which serves as a distributor of paid listings to the search engines such as Yahoo and MSN. Both these engines let Web site owners bid on a per-click cost for a sponsored ad and let the company determine what phrases it would like that ad to appear under. Web site owners then pay every time a user clicks on their sponsored ad.
WordTracker software also helps subscribers know how much a particular phrase costs on the search engine Overture. (See Figure 2)
Although search engines are the most popular and easy way to increase a Web site’s online exposure, companies can also buy “banner ads” – ads that appear across the top of a Web page – and listings in industry-related Web sites and newsletters. Associations, press publications, and related industry or online-resource Web sites offer advertising to qualified buyers in Web site directories, through banners on front and internal pages, and within their online newsletters.
Tracking Traffic, Volume And Behavior
Once a Web site has a decent online presence in general search engines and industry-related Web sites, traffic will increase and, hopefully, so will customer leads and sales. But companies don’t need to rely on hope to determine if their Web site is bringing in buying traffic. Web sites are hosted on servers that track basic information about site traffic in what’s called a “server log.” Software is available to help companies compile this log information and organize it into reports that can tell a company where users specifically come from, what pages those users go to once they enter the Web site, and how many of those users buy products or request more information on the Web site, among other things.
The amount of details available about traffic volume and behavior within a Web site is dependent on the software used to compile that information. One of the largest Web site server-log software is WebTrends (www.webtrends.com), available by subscription in several versions, depending on a Web site’s statistical needs. There are, however, hundreds of software packages available, each offering companies something different in compiling capabilities. Some compile reports that indicate general trends of traffic volume and behavior, while others can tell companies details like how much they paid for an ad in Overture, which products those Overture visitors bought online, and then what the specific return on investment was for that phrase and ad in the Overture engine for a month’s time. Other software helps companies gather information about visitors, which can then help the company compile reports about a specific visitor’s behavior on the Web site each time he or she visits. Online bookseller Amazon.com is one well-known example.
Once a company chooses the best software for its needs, reports can be generated to answer questions like:
Is the marketing attracting qualified traffic?
What Web sites refer buyers and leads?
How does traffic move through the Web site?
What pages do users typically leave from?
What percentages of users buy or request information on the first visit?
How much does it cost for every online lead or buyer?
Making Sales
Compiling and analyzing Web site statistics can only be effective if the Web site design and marketing has been done with goals in mind. Companies that want an effective Web site need to have a business and marketing plan for the site and not operate it haphazardly. If the Web site is more than just an online brochure, it can represent the company as a mini-business in a virtual world.
Most companies want online visitors to buy product or services from them, but that goal is typically too simplistic to be effective. Online-marketing research indicates that most first-time Web site visitors don’t purchase a product or service during their initial exposure to the Web site.
One commonly quoted figure estimates that on average, only 2 percent to 3 percent of Web site traffic will perform a “most-wanted-response” during a Web site visit, even if that response is not a purchase but a request for information or signing up for a newsletter. Web site goals can be even harder to determine when a company sells products through a distribution network.
Since most people need to return to a Web site multiple times before requesting information or making a purchase, some of the most effective goals for a Web site involve keeping the visitor engaged with useful information and capturing e-mails and names to entice visitors back to the Web site until they’re ready to buy.
The most common way to capture information is by offering an industry newsletter that provides valuable resources or information on a weekly or monthly basis. But contests, request-for-information forms, and free trials or products can also be good customer-retention goals for a Web site and can all inspire qualified leads to give an e-mail address, name or phone number.
Once a company establishes some activities for visitors, they can track the conversion rate between the total number of visitors and those that perform the desired actions on the Web site. If those goals are clearly established and analyzed, the information about how visitors find and interact with the Web site can justify changes in the marketing plan, content creation and Web site design. This information will also justify the costs of owning and operating the Web site, and can give companies hard figures about online lead costs and the costs of sales conversions.
Author Bio:
Article by Sage Lewis, founder and president of the web site promotion firm SageRock.com. He has been employed as an Internet Strategist and design/promotion consultant for 6 years.
Small business webmasters often believe search engine optimization is a complex and mysterious art that they must struggle to understand and master. It couldn’t be further from the truth. SEO is basic and simple – TEXT.
As a search engine optimizer, I’m faced daily with the errors of well-meaning webmasters who have unknowingly done their best to hide their site and its topic from the search engines. They do this by naming image files with numbers or word fragments unrelated to the image. They have splash page with an image named “product.gif” containing no “Alt” tags, no text and a link to their inside page named “intro.html” which is full of images!
Even if you use the most basic of web authoring software, SEO can be built in to your site simply by naming your HTML files with important keyword phrases, naming the image directory with more important keyword phrases dropping those same keyword phrases into headlines and body text. Oh, and let’s do have body text of at least 500 words. Many site owners seem to believe that a few product photos and a nice looking logo will suffice.
Wrong. You must have text using keyword phrases within your site or the search engines have no way of knowing what those products or services are that you sell.
Text is all that the search engines have to determine what your site is about. Text in your metatags, text in your headline, text in your body copy, text in image filenames and text in your domain name and directory names. SEO is all about words on the page NOT images of words in gorgeous graphics created by your designer and displayed in IMAGES of words in fancy fonts. This includes those menu links from image maps and buttons.
I have a new client whose resort has been positively written up in dozens of national magazines. I was glad to see links to those articles within their site until I clicked on one and got an IMAGE of the magazine page instead of text from the magazines. Many magazines do not allow reproducing their content without licensing, but all allow a limited quote with attribution along with links from the quote to the article on their site.
Those quotes would serve as dramatic testimonials for the client and there are dozens of important keyword phrases in those rave reviews that would be good stuff for both the search engines and the site visitors. Even if there were only one paragraph from each of the dozen great reviews on a single page, that TEXT would be just what the search engine doctor ordered. This will be our first move in working with this new client.
I’ve got another client that sends out press releases on a regular basis discussing their latest partnership or new product. These press releases are chock full of keyword phrases and important industry lingo and buzz- words. The catch? They distribute these press releases as PDF files and serve them to visitors via FTP, which essentially hides them from the search engines! Their partners then distribute them via FTP as well because that is how they received it. This strategy cheats my client out of links from their partners because those press releases are NOT posted as HTML pages anywhere!
The thing that I always emphasize to new clients is that search engines read text that appears on their web page only. Search engines don’t read images or pretty graphics, they can only make assumptions based on those image names and the image “alt” tags. Try doing an image search at Google for “logo” and see what you get. Now try an image search for common words to compare the filenames used to describe those images. Search for any number combination and you’ll see how common numbers are as image filenames.
Try another image search for keyword phrases that are important to your industry and I’ll wager that is your competition. If you take an extra step and review the filenames in the URL that appear directly below those results describing where that keyword named image turns up. I’ll bet the competitors who are tops in non image searches for similar important keyword phrases use those phrases in image filenames, directory names and domain names.
I’ve had clients that get their site redesigned soon after I’ve done site optimization who come back to me asking why their search engine rankings dropped.
Inevitably their site designer has not only used word fragments or numbers as image and page filenames, but removed hyperlinks from important keyword phrases in body text, text that was maintained at our instruction. Text hyperlinks are another important ingredient to SEO that designers dislike because it changes text colors in order to help visitors know it’s hyperlinked phrase.
Although designers and search engine optimizers rarely work together, they should be required to. Even though the SEO’s job would simply be to type keyword phrases in the “save as” box because designers won’t do it on their own. If a copywriter is hired, they should work with the SEO as well, although the SEO’s job would be only to convince the copywriter that it’s OK, indeed is necessary, to use keyword phrases more than a single time. Copywriters don’t like repeating themselves and often pride themselves on saying the same thing in various creative ways. Search engines don’t yet fully support using a thesaurus to determine page content.
Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketin
The King is dead! Long live the King!
The death of Louis XIV. was announced by the captain of the bodyguard from a window of the state apartment. Raising his truncheon above his head, he broke it in the centre, and throwing the pieces among the crowd, exclaimed in a loud voice, “Le Roi est mort!” Then seizing another staff, he flourished it in the air as he shouted, “Vive le Roi!” (Yes I know it’s French for King, but work with me here, it works so well for my story!)
Pardoe: Life of Louis XIV., vol. iii. p. 457.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the captain of the bodygaurd for Advertising, so the task of announcing the death of advertising is not among my responsibilities. Nor is finding a successor to the throne. No, I do the less glorious task of search engine marketing. I’m quietly on the sidelines as Dot Bomb after Dot Gone pass by in a funeral procession that seems endless. The parade route marching to the funeral dirge and drum, glumly trudging through the streets mark the passing of online royalty on a weekly basis.
Every week we bow our heads in honor of the passing of another advertising-reliant giant. Today it’s WebGiant, before that it was WebVan and WebMD and Wine.com — I’m starting at the bottom of a very long alphabetical list, as you no doubt know.
The deathmarch itself has been analyzed-to-death by everyone from network news anchors to newspaper commentators and pundits.
I won’t burden us with another perspective here other than to say that it’s big business that has it all wrong in a twisted attempt to apply old models to a new medium. I wonder why it is that each new technology is constantly wedged into the wrong shape hole because that is “where the money is”.
When television was first developed, we didn’t know what to do with it because advertising was not so ubiquitous. We had print advertising in magazines and radio advertisement ruled the airwaves. But everyone agreed that television was worthless . . .
Not more than 10 per cent of the population will take up television permanently. Raymond Postgate, 1935
Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device. C P Scott, 1936
Television won’t last because people will get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox co-founder, 1946
Not more than 10 per cent of the population will take up television permanently. Raymond Postgate, 1935
Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device. C P Scott, 1936
Television won’t last because people will get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox co-founder, 1946
But TV finally fell to advertising and is now fully one-third ads and very little content, except for product placement and sponsored content.
But because advertising ruled our lives when the internet was launched in 1995, we just naturally assumed that advertising would rule online as well. But we got it wrong. I spend hours online daily and do all I can to ignore the flashing, blinking banners and skyscraper ads and sponsored links glaring from the top, bottom and now edges, of the screen in front of me.
How do people behave online? Simple, they search. They search for things they have an interest in. They bookmark favorites. Most don’t know why they get the results they do when searching.
It’s because the top ranking sites in search results are very specifically designed by people who know how to gain those top rankings in the search engines. Why on earth would anyone spend good money on advertising when most web surfers seek to avoid advertising and even buy software meant to block advertising from their web pages? Why on earth don’t more businesses see that search engine positioning is the number one solution to visibility and success online?
Here comes another funeral.com march. I’ll bet they had Super Bowl ads and have banners flashing all over my favorite web site. Oh and look! They have banner ads on the hearse! I guess they didn’t want to waste the eyeballs attending the funeral. At least they aren’t animated banners. Have some Respect!
Well, I’m going to usurp the job of the Captain of the Kings’ bodygaurd and announce that “Advertising is Dead!”
“La ROI publicit? est mort!” (Ad Return On Investment)
“Long live Search Engine Positioning!” Viva le ROI! Viva le SEO!
Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing.
Most likely, you have probably used a web search engine such as Google, AltaVista or Yahoo! to find specific information on the Internet. Did you ever stop and wonder how exactly do search engines find that information? We will explain that to you in this section. In so doing, you will begin to discover how to efficiently structure your web site to obtain maximum brand strength from search engines.
It’s a very common misconception that when a user enters a query into any search engine, the engine interrogates the Web to find pages that match the query. That is NOT how it works at all! The search engine searches its own copy of the Web. Every search engine actually creates its own copy of the Internet. This copy is called an index. The size of a search engine’s index varies from search engine to search engine, but it is always smaller than the Web as a whole. For example, as of August 2003, it is currently estimated that the Web presently consists of approximately 3.4 Billion pages, whereas the largest search engine index is currently about 600 million pages. (more…)
Unethical SEO Firms Are Making A Mockery of SEO Process
92% of the Internet users worldwide use search engines to find the web sites they are looking for. So merely launching a web site won’t make you richer in terms of traffic, popularity and exposure. That’s why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants or firms have mushroomed at a brisk pace to quench your thirst for traffic. They strive to place your web site at the top of the search engine rankings.
The search engine optimization industry is thriving consistently by capitalizing on ever-increasing desire of the web site owners to wrest the lion’s share of the traffic-pie from their rivals. Fierce competition for popularity is the lifeline of the SEO industry. (more…)
Myth: SEO Experts Are Too Costly
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is generally much less expensive than certain PPC (Pay-for-Click) programs and less costly than any other marketing campaign you can conduct, both online or offline. It usually costs much less than direct mail, renting broadcast email lists (which may be illegal now in many states and some Canadian provinces), banner ads, print ads, booths at trade fairs, etc. Confusion may arise because pricing isn’t consistent at all in online advertising. Some have price tags in the five or six figure range, others have costs of just a few hundred or a thousand dollars.
However, most cost a significant amount. Many businesses may not have the financial resources to go ahead in such a program. The much less expensive and better way to do it is with a good, serious and professional Web site positioning and optimization service available from specialized SEO firms such as Rank for $ales.com (more…)
Most of the major search engines referred to by this web site work by sending an automated crawler, known as a spider or bot, around the Web to find new pages and existing, updated pages. Examples of such search engines are Google Bot, Fresh Bot (Google), AltaVista, Excite and Fast etc. The crawler in question makes a copy of each page found and so builds a copy of the Web in its index.
When a human actually uses a search engine to find a specific product or service, the search engine looks at its index of the Web and displays a list of results. That list of results is in order of direct relevancy, with the most relevant results first. A properly optimized web site with relevant keywords and keyphrases will receive highly targeted traffic from serious prospective buyers. (more…)
The Internet is growing everyday, and the work of the search engines is getting tougher. Search engines are constantly looking for innovative ways to serve the most accurate and relevant results to its visitors.
The search engines have incorporated popularity factors into their ranking algorithm in order to create better relevancy formulae. This does not mean that the on-the-page factors or the importance of content can be ignored. If there are two sites with equally optimized meta tags and attractive content, the site having more link popularity will attain a higher search engine position. (more…)
Dynamically Generated Web Pages
The contents of dynamically generated web pages are often invisible to most search engine spiders. This is the reason that they hardly ever get indexed. You can get your dynamically generated web site listed within the search engine results, by making the content of your site visible to search engine spiders.
Generally, a dynamic web page is a template that displays distinct information in response to queries made by visitors. A major part of the page content comes from the database connected to the web site. Visitors find dynamically generated web pages very impressive, as they get instant access to the data they want. Also, these sites are easy to update. If there is a new product or some modifications to the price, the web master just has to edit the database, instead of editing hundreds of individual static web pages. (more…)
