A Website is not Enough
December 5, 2009
Your small business needs an appealing and professional website but that is just the beginning. If no one visits your website and — more importantly — if it does not bring in new customers and allows you to sell more to your current customers, then your site is not effective. What do you need to improve your online marketing efforts?
The first step is to decide on a primary goal for your website. Is it to directly sell products or services through e-commerce? Or is the goal to capture leads so you can follow-up and make the sale by email and phone?
For e-commerce you need a website design with a shopping cart system, that encourages people to purchase products using the shopping cart. Both the design and written content should maintain this focus.
If your goal is to capture leads, the key is to have the content that provides initial information about your products and services that interests prospective customers. It should be easy for the prospective customer to fill out a contact form and hit the submit button or call your 800-number. The form should be submitted to a contact management system such as Salesforce or SugarCRM.
Getting it Done
Your business needs a professional website, which can cost between $2,000 — $15,000 to design. This is not only more than most small businesses want to spend but also unnecessary to succeed on the Web.
For small business there is usually little need for an elaborate, expensive website. You can get an appealing and professional website design for as little as $250.
The key to a professional website design is to work with a good designer who takes the time to listen to you and translate your vision into an effective website. Your designer must be as skilled in listening as in design.
Once the site is completed there must be an easy way for you – or someone on your behalf — to maintain the website. The designer should provide you with an easy-to-use content management system (CMS), enabling you to edit your website without having to contact your designer. This saves you money.
Once you have a professional website you have the foundation for marketing online. You can build on that foundation and use the Internet as an effective marketing tool.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing can be divided into two main categories: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC).
Please do a Google search right now for something pretty popular (e.g., coffee). The results on the left side of the browser window that reach down to the bottom of the page are the organic search results. The top results are generally the more popular sites. The highest ranking sites are those sites that have the most links from other websites (especially other high ranking sites). In a sense, other people have voted for the high ranking sites by linking to them. Often, the high ranking sites are the most popular but there is also a lot of gaming of the system. You cannot, however, pay Google to increase your site’s ranking.
On the right side of your search results and, sometimes, up at the top of the page are the “Sponsored Links.” These links are paid advertising through a system called Google Adwords. Look for the “Sponsored Links” heading and compare how these links look with the non-sponsored organic links.
Search Engine Optimization
To increase your search rankings in Google (and other search engines), you can do a number of things. We will focus on Google because of its dominant position as a search engine.
The truth is that it is a crowded field out there for most keywords. Your best bet is to find some niche keywords and work on those. It would be very difficult to achieve a high ranking for the keyword “coffee” but if you have a more specific niche you have a better chance of succeeding.
For example – and this is just an example for illustration, not necessarily a good keyword combination – “Guatemalan shade grown coffee” would be an easier space in which to compete. You would have a chance of rising to the top or at least getting on the first page of results.
The primary way to increase your ranking is to have other high ranking sites establish links to your site and have those links associated with specific keywords – such as “Guatemalan shade grown coffee” as in our example. What follows is a few ideas on how to do that in an ethically and effective way. Don’t be tempted by gimmicks because Google and other search engines are becoming more savvy, and can penalize sites that try to game the system too much.
First, submit your site to as many directories and other clearinghouse type sites in your industry as you can. That should probably be your first step in SEO. Again, use the keywords that you are most interested in associating with your site.
Submit your site to general directories that are organized by topic. Some sites charge money for fast consideration of your submission, and are probably worth it. For example, Yahoo Directory charges $300/year for expedited consideration of your submission. For other highly prized directories — such as the Open Directory Project — you just have to submit your site and hope it will be considered reasonably soon.
Next, talk to your vendors and people in related industries and see about arranging for link exchanges or perhaps even success stories that include a link. They link to you and, in exchange, you link to them.
Then start writing articles. The key to articles is to write about something you know and that has information that is genuinely interesting to your audience. Publish your article in publications that are related to your industry. If your article is published in web publications, you will not only get direct sales leads from your article but your article will also help your search engine position.
For example, our fictional coffee vendor could write an article on exactly why shade grown coffee is superior to non-shade grown coffee. Or, better yet, why “Guatemalan Shade Grown Coffee” is truly the best. The article would have to include facts to support this claim and not just fluff. Maybe the next article could be on how to make the perfect cup of coffee. I would be first in line to read that one.
The key thing to remember is that SEO is a long process. You rarely get instant results. It can take 8-12 months to see any significant progress. You have to keep at it.
Pay Per Click (ppc) Advertising
There are a number of PPC providers but we will focus on Google Adwords as they are currently the dominant PPC system.
First, you decide on the goal (called a conversion) of your Adwords campaign. Is it a direct sign-up? Is it capturing sales leads?
A conversion when the goal is achieved and Google Adwords keeps a running tally of your conversions and the cost per conversion. You can see the cost of obtaining a lead or the cost of getting a customer. You can determine if Adwords is working for you, and whether you should make adjustments or discontinue it completely. Generally, it takes a bit of experimentation to get it right but it can be a steady source of business for you. It is worth some effort as once it is set up well it runs and can bring in a steady stream of business.
You set a daily budget (say $35) and a maximum bid on specific keywords (say $2.75). You only pay when someone clicks on your ad click. So if you are bidding $2.75 you might only pay an average of say $2.60 per click. It depends on the keywords and how much you want to bid. Spend some time choosing good keywords. Google Adwords has tools to help you choose the most powerful keywords. You will also need to embed some special code in your website to enable Google to track conversions.
Google Adwords really works. Try it and see if it will work for you. It does not require a big investment to get started. In fact, some web hosting and design companies offer a coupon so you can get started with Adwords for free. Google Adwords is easier to use than you might think.
Permission-Based E-mail Marketing
Spammers have given Email marketing a bad name in much the same way that unethical salespeople have given sales a bad name. This is unfortunate as a knowledgeable salesperson can be an essential part of making good buying decisions. The same is true of good email marketing.
With permission-based email marketing – as opposed to spam – the receiver of the email has expressed interest. Think of spam as the wily salesman in the polyester suit — and think of permission-based email as the knowledgeable salesperson we respect.
For example, I am on an email list at a bookstore that I frequent. I look forward to the e-newsletters as they often have interesting content and good discounts. I enjoy receiving this e-newsletter and the bookstore gets more business from me as a result. I rarely go anywhere else to buy books. They have retained me as a customer and I buy more often at least in part because of their e-newsletter.
Email marketing can help you increase customer retention and help you earn more revenue from each customer by cross-selling and up-selling to your current customer base. It can also help you expand your client base.
Email marketing is becoming crucial to online marketing and – when done ethically and well — can be extremely effective. Sign up for a free trial with an email marketing service and see if it works for you. If not, try another service. Find a service that meets your needs.
You can grow your own email newsletter list with a sign up form on your website, and by asking for opt-in in your sign-up and lead capture forms.
What to look for in an Email Marketing Provider
At a minimum an email marketing service should make it easy for you to create eye-catching emails, manage multiple email lists, and place newsletter sign-up forms on your website. There should be powerful list management, robust reporting, and reliability. Your provider must also have excellent customer service.
Your email marketing service should include an easy way to track the results of your email campaigns. Who opened your email, how many times, and when? Did they click on the link you provided? Did they purchase anything or submit a lead? The service should enable you to track message reads in real time, and read detailed reports online or export them to a spreadsheet.
In addition, your email marketing service should give you the ability to manage multiple lists and divide lists into multiple segments.
Conclusion
Obtaining a website and marketing your products or services online does not have to be expensive. An economical way to accomplish these goals is to hire a company to design your website and provide you with bundled web hosting and permission-based email marketing services. It would be an added bonus if they can get you started using Google Adwords with a free coupon.
Shawn Hickman
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/a-website-is-not-enough-81377.html
How to Achieve a Success in Runet? Invest in Search Engine Marketing!
November 26, 2009
Many people say that search engines are the future of the business. If your company is not present on search engine ranking pages, most probably this will have a major influence on the profits, awareness and competitiveness. We search for business partners, suppliers and services in different ways and languages all over the world. These who are interested in the Eastern Europe market should have necessary pieces of information how to effectively reach through Internet their potential customers e.g. in Russia.
This article presents a summary of how the Russian (the fastest growing population of internauts all over the world according to comScore World Metrix, Jan 2007) look for information. It also explains the advantages of a good exposure in search engine listings in the Russian search engines.
Searching activity in the Russian Internet (known also as Runet) is concentrated in 4 major search engines. These are:
- Yandex.ru – with 48,4% of market share;
- Google – 28,6%;
- Rambler.ru – 15,9%;
- Mail.ru – 4,7%;
The other players (Yahoo, MSN, Aport, Meta Bot, Alta Vista and others) take the rest of the market, according to SpyLOG Feb / Mar 2007 stats – http://gs.spylog.ru/r/?reportId=7&categoryId=1.
Business promotes itself in Russia
As a result of intense development of Runet, not only the local SMBs spend money on PPC campaigns but also both international companies of the same size as well as big multinational businesses like General Motors, Nissan, Peugeot, Honda and Sony. In case of these companies, yearly advertising budget is between $1.5 mln – $3.5 mln with up to 50% of it being spent on search engine advertising in Yandex.ru.
Search Engine Marketing on the top
Due to the great interest among advertisers, 2006 expenses on search engine promotion in the Russian Internet grew by 150% comparing to year 2005 and reached $110 million. Thus, search engine advertising has beaten banner advertising (with $100 million spendings) first time ever. This should be a very important signal for all the companies which promote themselves online, that SEM activity (a mix of technology and words which allows to reach now more than 90% of internet users) is an optimum way of the promotion (Lenta.ru – http://lenta.ru/news/2007/02/12/advert/).
Optimum costs of promotion
The minimum price for a single click (CPC) in Yandex.ru varies from (depending on the industry) $0.50 (“stickers”) to $5.00 (“refridgerators”). In Begun.ru one can pay $4.00 (“cash terminals”), $5.70 (“sight correction”), $5.90 (“companies registration”) and even $6.20 for “company closure”. The highest prices ($9.99) are paid for targeted campaigns which take into account very precise parameters, geolocation and time restrictions. You can compare this to $1550 – $5000 prices of one week banner campaign on popular Russian portals (according to http://www.context.1ps.ru).
Investing money in paid listings should be then cheaper and undoubtedly more efficient. When talking about banners, one pays for impressions, not users’ interest measured by clicks and actions taken on the advertiser’s website. The opposite payment model is assigned to sponsored links – payment is made only for users interested in products and services who click and visit the website.
Competition among advertisers
The highest prices in Yandex.Direct (http://www.direct.yandex.ru) are related to B2B activity, where just one transaction (no matter if it is selling a drilling rig or Boeing) per year make a single click with CPC of $48.00 affordable. Apart from above-mentioned B2B examples, the most competitive areas of interest are flats’ sale in the modern block of flats, airplane rentals, Forex stock exchange and building industry services.
Why Yandex?
Coming back to the most important search engine in Russia… Yandex – not very well organized in late ‘90s, now is the leader of search engines in Runet. The company put an emphasis on contextual advertising and doubled its revenues last year, becoming even stronger player at the market. The management estimates that this year’ income from search-related advertising should be close to $100 million. At present, 25 million people use Yandex with 5 million of unique users every day. On the contrary, tens of thousands of companies conduct their promotional activity through this search engine. The constantly growing audience of Yandex makes more advertisers interested in both search engine optimization (being well exposed in organic listings) and PPC marketing (paid listings). They seem to make the right decision as the results come very quickly because of modern character of Yandex. Since 2005 it has had two advertising systems, comparable to Google AdWords and AdSense (according to Yandex official blog – http://company.yandex.ru/blog/).
Cheap listing better than expensive banner impression
Lew Glejzer, the director of AdWatsh advertising agency predicts that expenses on search engine marketing in 2007 will go over $200 million in total. All innovative companies that think about future take seriously into account paid listings – adds Dmitrij Wasiljew, Link.ru director. The banners are becoming more expensive and will probably be exclusively used by large companies while search engine marketing is affordable for SMBs as well.
“Key” keywords
In order to be completely successful one need to use precisely defined keywords – the ones which are both relevant to company business profile and are frequently used by people in queries made in search engines. The most popular queries between Dec 2006 and Feb 2007 were: papers (proceedings), desktop wallpapers, horoscope, postcards, weather, games, news, mp3, proverbs, dates, mobile phones, recipes, friendships, music, anecdotes, jobs, cars, predictions, sex, erotics, map of Moscow, chat, samsung d500, kamasutra, flats, photos, nokia, football, russian radio, lyrics, motorization, porno, pregnancy, Aeroflot (according to SpyLOG stats – http://gs.spylog.ru/r/?reportId=8&categoryId=1). Maybe this will be an inspiration for somebody when planning a ppc campaign on, let’s say, Yandex…
Who can see the advertisement?
Most of them are the Russian people – 44.4%, but the advertisement can be also presented to the Americans (14.5%), Ukrainians (4.7%) and Germans (3.5%) not to mention others. That is why search engine marketing in Russia gives the opportunities to reach people from different parts of the world. When talking about the Russian cities, there is one strong leader – the capital (Moscow) with 44% and other cities like Sankt-Petersburg (10.1%) or Jekaterynburg (2.6%), according to SpyLOG stats (http://gs.spylog.ru/rsu/?categoryId=1).
What are the benefits of search engine marketing?
Search engines are responsible for a significant traffic share on Russian websites. This is the result of good exposure in organic listings as well as paid listings activity conducted by Russian companies. The examples below present some traffic statistics on different sectors in the Runet in Nov 2006 (SpyLog stats http://gs.spylog.ru/tcu/5/preView/274.html).
Finance
- Users monthly: 1 200 000
- Traffic share:
- 57% – direct visits
- 32% – search engines
- 11% – other sources
- credits, banks, mortgage, consumer credits, car credits, credit calculator, credit card
Computers
- Users monthly: 1 801 000
- Traffic share:
- 64% – direct visits
- 29% – search engines
- 7% – other sources
- notebooks, computers, driver, computer sale, notebook sale, notebook review, Asus, laptop installment, Dell inspiron 1300, Dell inspiron 6400
Mobile phones
- Users monthly: 1 115 500
- Traffic share:
- 47% – search engines
- 46% – direct visits
- 7% – other sources
- mobile phones, cellphones, nokia, mobile phones catalogue, sony ericsson, nokia 8800, mobile phones online sellers, mobile phone sale, nokia n72
Cars
- Users monthly: 1 923 000
- Traffic share:
- 44% – search engines
- 38% – direct visits
- 18%- other sources
- Mazda, Ford, Nissan, Citroen, Honda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Renault, Ford Focus
Travel
- Users monthly: 2 484 900
- Traffic share:
- 58% – direct visits
- 33% – search engines
- 9% – other sources
- Turkey, warm countries trips, hotels in Turkey, Egypt, holidays in Turkey, holidays in Egypt, hotels in Egypt, New Year trips, Greece, Tunis, Creta.
Runet + SEM = SUCCESS
By spending money on search engine marketing in Runet one can create new opportunities, particularly in the commerce area. The advertising activity in Russian search engines gives the possibility for all companies focused on the international trade (both exporters and importers) to be present on this big market in order to make new business contacts, agreements and increase the revenues. As usually, the first ones will be the winners – that is why we strongly recommend taking into consideration SEM activity in Russia as it may bring significant profits for almost every company.
Maciej Galecki
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/how-to-achieve-a-success-in-runet-invest-in-search-engine-marketing-131602.html
Finding Clients In An Ocean Of Competitors
November 18, 2009
There is more business being done online than ever before. There are hundreds of thousands of new business web sites coming on every month. 70% of the US population (233 million people) are online. Over 1.2 billion people worldwide are online. The question is how do we find clients in an ocean of competitors?
Part of the answer to the above question is which number do you focus on, the number of people on line or the number of competitors? If you are focused on the number of people online, read on. If you are more focused on the number of competitors, read on.
Search engine marketing has been proven to have the lowest cost per acquisition of any other marketing medium. It is the only medium where people are actively searching for you. A successful campaign should include a web site designed around one question: “What are your clients looking for?” This is the starting point and may seem basic but it is surprising how many people have are just scratching the surface in their understanding of this.
Your clients are in need of solutions, answers or products. Do they know:
1.that you exist?
2.the unique value that you bring to the table?
3.the depth of knowledge and experience you can bring to bear in helping them solve their issues?
4.the passion that you have for meeting their needs?
SEO Management
SEO (search engine optimization), is the art helping people find what they are looking for, on your site”. A well optimized website requires two elements the correct “on page” optimization so that the search engines can determine the relevancy of the information you are presenting. Yes, it is not as important as it use to be but it is still needed. Another essential piece of the puzzle is “off page optimization”. This is having web sites linking back to yours. You may think that you are important and provide a great service to mankind but if no one else does you will not get ranked well. Quality links to your web site and an on going linking strategy is absolutely vital for good rankings. SEO optimization is not a onetime deal it is an ongoing process.
PPC Management
Pay-per-click is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your site from the major search engines. It can also suck your marketing budget dry in just a couple of days if not done properly. The goal of the search engines (and their strategies) is more clicks. The more people click on your ads the more money the search engines make. Their strategy is to get as many clicks as possible with in your budget and they are willing to do that all day long. Great for them bad for you.
The real goal should be more conversion with less clicks and lower cost. For lead generation sites this will mean lower cost per conversion. For ecommerce sites this will result in a higher “return on ad spend”. It is easy to figure out: profit/ad spend=% and if that % is not over 101% you are losing money! The only way to do that is to track every thing from clicks to conversions; cost per click to cost per conversion; total revenue. ppc Management should be the process that is designed to make that happen.
Click Fraud Management
Click Fraud is a fact of life in the online world. The search engines are getting better at detecting and crediting their online advertisers. The key is to find a Click Fraud program that can track an IP address even if the go to another search engine and click on your ads and give them a warning that they are being tracked. It is amazing how bad behavior stops if the they know they are being watched and tracked! Also, some click fraud caused by our clients who find it easier to keep clicking on our ad instead of book marking our page. This will give them a gentle reminder to do that.
Many Roads
It is also important to examine as many roads to your site as possible. Find blogs where your clients hang out. Write articles and publish them on the web. There are hundreds of sites that will publish you articles for free. For a nominal fee some sites will push your article out to thousands of other sites looking for content, Isnare.com is a good example. This is great from three perspectives. One, you will get a tremendous amount of links back to your site. Secondly, this will lead to increase traffic and thirdly writing articles will help establish you as an expert in your field. There are newsletters, co-registration, affiliate marketing. The key is to research these and see what will work for you.
Hire or not to Hire outside help
“How do I know if I need help?”
You might need help if:
1.Your clients and customers are not able to find you on the search engines.
2.You do not know why your competitors are in the top ten search results and you are on page 10,001!
3.You can not keep up with the changing technologies and even the changes in the market.
3.You do not have the time to take away from what you do best, running your business!
If you do need help do your home work.
1.Get references and call them.
2.Get specifics about how they have helped their clients.
2.Find out how many clients they have and how many your account manager will handle.
3.Get a specific action calendar. Know what they are going to do and when it will be complete.
4.Make sure they understand your products, services and goals.
5.Do not be afraid to get another company to “audit” their work
Finally
This is serious business and one can loose a lot of money and time very quickly if you do not do it correctly. The bottom line is, if your customers cannot find you, they will find someone else. If you do not have someone in house with a passion to help grow your business. Find someone who knows what is important to the search engines and will not get you banned.
Terry Stanfield
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/finding-clients-in-an-ocean-of-competitors-249828.html
Web CEO Review
November 16, 2009
Web CEO Review – Overview
Web CEO is a suite of search engine optimization and website analysis tools. Web CEO can analyse your site’s traffic, monitor its position in different search engines and optimize your web pages to improve your rankings.
Web CEO Review – Features
Keyword suggestion – Search the database for related keywords, put them through detailed competitiveness analysis and pick out the best choices for your site
Page optimization – Get clear and detailed advice on how to tweak a web page for your keyword then apply this advice in a specialized page editor
Search engine submission – Auto-submit the optimized pages to major search engines around the world. Also, facilitate manual submissions through a friendly interface
Ranking Check – Get comprehensive ranking reports for multiple engines and keywords. Collect ranking history and build trends. Industry safest human emulation techniques ensure you will not be banned by the search engines for automated queries
Link popualrity analysis – Analyze how many links you get from other sites and how good these links are for your rankings. Research your competition and top sites and spy their linking strategy
Traffic analysis – Collect accurate statistics of referring keywords and engines, link partners, ad campaigns, visitors and their navigation, popular pages etc. &ndash anything you need to manage and improve your web marketing activities (with a 15 day hitlens trial)
Partner finder – Look for potential link exchange partners, evaluate their websites and manage your correspondence with the website owners
ppc campaign manager – Take control of your paid search campaigns: register new accounts with the PPC search engines, and easily manage existing ones
FTP Client – Web CEO also has a built-in FTP Client (website uploader) which allows you to upload your optimized pages to your website’s server
Web CEO Review
Web CEO is extremely popular and fast becoming the industry standard SEO tool. This is no surprise and completely down to this programs excellent design and large arsenal of SEO weapons. It has so many features which will aid you at every stage of a web page’s publishing -from choosing the most suitable keywords and optimizing the page for them to monitoring that page’s rankings and competition.
Web CEO is extremely easy to use. You don’t need any knowlege of Search Engine Optimization to use the software. Everything you need is clearly accessible and very well laid out. All tools are displayed and used in wizard format, so Web CEO simply asks you for certain pieces of information and you hit the start button.
Web CEO’s built-in FTP client is a useful extra. It saves having to download a separate piece of software and helps to keep all your website tasks in one place. Its fully functional however some features are not as easy to use as they are in other FTP programs. For example CHMOD file permissions cannot be set by number (typing 777 or 604 etc) and files cannot be dragged from an external window into Web CEO for file transfer.
The keyword tool is exceptional. It provides tactical information crucial to any SEO campaign. Although the keyword suggestion tool isn’t perfect (giving some strange results at times) it is still very useful. However, the keyword research tools are flawless and a major feature of this software. Web CEO’s keyword research tools allow you to search on a keyword and display: some related keywords/phrases, their daily search volume, number of competitors and KEI (a number which suggests how useful that keyword is for you). You can then check for the top competitors for selected keywords and analyse them for: who is linking to them, their page rank and many more factors.
[note: competitor analysis not available in the free version]
Finding link partners is a quick and easy task with Web CEO. You select your targeted keywords and Web CEO finds hundereds of potential partners and rates their use to you. It doesn’t stop there though as the software can also manage your correspondence and automatically send emails to all selected potential partners based on editable templates. This cuts a huge amount of time off your link building campaign. Web CEO can also show you the sites that link to you, this is good for checking that link partners are keeping up their side of the bargain.
The website auditor is excellent. It scans your site and warns you of any broken links as well as a number of other quality factors (slow loading pages, missing META descriptions etc). Finding and eradicating these quality problems is key to running a successful website but would be very time consuming or impossible without Web CEO.
Web CEO Review – Pros:
Huge range of features
Extremely easy to use
Automates heavily time consuming tasks
Provides a great depth of information on competitors
Allows easy SEO of web page code
Provides one-click quality monitoring
Web CEO’s data center is regularly updated
FREE edition available!
Web CEO Review – Cons:
FTP client does have a few downfalls
Some features not available in the free version (well worth investing in)
Web CEO is a brilliant Search Engine Optimization suite offering site quality monitoring, automatic search engine submission and link building campaign management in addition to its large array of SEO and website promotion tools. The free edition of Web CEO has so many features theres no excuse not to try it today!
Download Web CEO for FREE!
James Kinsley
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/web-ceo-review-112131.html
SEO Success: Step Two is Attracting Search Engine Attention
November 5, 2009
Once the website has been created and published, many new
website owners think that the web development project is
finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In
order to create a money-making site, traffic must be generated
and driven to the website. There are several effective methods
that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create
this web traffic. While all methods may not be required to
realize successful traffic generation, some combination of most,
if not all, will probably be needed to create traffic, maintain
traffic and finally, grow traffic to your website with
long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these
strategies:
- Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition,
and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see
your website as an active, not stagnate, website. How often
should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more
frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true
methods you may want to employ:
– Monthly newsletter (or weekly) – Tip of the day that rotates
to the page using a script from an existing database of
information at your site – RSS feed to public news feeds that
update hourly or daily at the least – Changes to contact
information, staffing, clients, etc. – Checking the links
frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and
changing the link text from time to time will register as a
change to the page – Simple modification of content from time to
time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks
which will update the website
- Good links management will result in a stronger weight given
by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms
used for weighting one page over another require link popularity
assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link
popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google and
Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be
tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the
links, but there are several means that can be employed:
– Reciprocal Links – Search for relevant and desired web pages
with which to trade links – Purchase Page Rank-based links -
boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines by
purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until
you have achieved a better ranking – List with directories -
paid or unpaid directory listing that are relevant to your
website will give your website additional exposure – Anchor text
- create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant
keywords where possible – PageRank consideration – link only
with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3
could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum
requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you
- Blogs – web logs linked to your site or posting to popular
blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your
site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with the blog posting
- Forums – forum participation that allows you to leave your
link with the intent of attracting traffic back to your site can
get traffic back to your website, however, take care that you
actually offer something of value in your posting so you are not
accused of spamming – Search engine listings – listing with the
few free search engines and directories is an essential step,
although you won’t see any results for months – Gather opt-in
email addresses – utilize an email list subscription function on
your website with the intent of sending e-newsletters and
announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be
used for several other campaigns, including the sale of
advertising space on your newsletter. – Advertise on ezines -
purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote
your product and/or services as well as links to your website in
the process.
- Pay-Per-Click (ppc) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search
Marketing where you purchase advertising space based on keywords
that are popular for your website if you are not in a saturated
market. If your business operates in a saturated internet
market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine
your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can
afford for the positioning you desire. It’s all mathematical:
– Price Per Click = monthly budget/number of clicks or – Number
of clicks = monthly budget/price per click
Some suitable combination of price and number of clicks based on
your own budget will result in a campaign you can monitor and
adjust as necessary. The important result to watch for is the
conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired
result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for
e-newsletter, etc.
Remember that the website is only the first step. Driving
traffic to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan
of action and follow-through. You are not going to realize
success until you spend the time and energy – or pay someone
else for their time and energy – to get the job done.
(c)2005. TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chesa Keane
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/seo-success-step-two-is-attracting-search-engine-attention-2359.html