Nov 28 2010

Tools To Monitor Your Website

Category: SEORichard @ 2:38 pm

You can’t just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening.


1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html


2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/


3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitor’s website: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/


4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/


5. In order to check the Yahoo! web ranking of your’s or your competitor’s website use : http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/


6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/


7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/


8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/


9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and share your ads with other website owners: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/


10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/


11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/ http://www.amazingcounters.com/?ref=gad033 http://www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html http://www.free-counters.net/

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Nov 27 2010

Search Engine Marketing-how It Differs From Search Engine Optimization

Category: SEORichard @ 6:15 am

Search engine marketing is a set of marketing methods used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages. Types of search engine marketing include; search engine optimization, pay per click, paid inclusion, and social media optimization. Search engine marketing differs from search engine optimization which is the art and science of making web pages attractive to internet search engines.


Non-profit organizations, universities, political parties, and the government can all benefit from search engine marketing. Businesses that sell products and/or services online can use search engine marketing to help improve their sales figures.


Some of the goals of search engine marketing are to develop a brand, generate media coverage, and enhancing a reputation, and to drive business to a physical location.


If you do not feel confident enough to try your own search engine marketing there are several companies that will be able to help you out for a price. If you decide to go with a search engine marketing company take your time and shop around, find a company that really suits your own businesses search engine marketing needs.


Stay away from companies that promise top rankings. Most companies that promise tope ranking are more interested in your money then they are in keeping your business. Quite often this type of company will charge you top doller, spend a few days making sure your website has a few basic requirements and that is the last you hear from them. This type of search engine marketing company is not really interested in repeat customers.


Tread carefully around companies that promise first page rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Make sure these companies are talking about sponsored listings and not just natural listings. Companies that are only after natural listings traditionally charge a large monthly fee, using a small portion of the money on sponsored listings, and pocketing the remainder.


The false promise most commonly used by shady search engine marketing companies is the money back guarantee. Generally if you read the contract very carefully you will lean that these companies have a very strange idea of major search engine. Companies that have a money back guarantee typically don’t deal with the search engine movers and shakers like Google and Yahoo, instead they use small obscure search engines that are hardly ever used.


The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) was created in 2003 to offer the public educational resources about search engine marketing and to also promote search engine marketing. Currently SEMPO represents over 500 global search engine marketing companies. Sempo is happy to offer their resources to the public for free. SEMPO has offers search engine marketing training courses for any and all interested parties who would like to expand their knowledge of search engine marketing. SEMPO’s objectives are to teach search engine marketing strategies, techniques, and successful practices, to increase the availability and quality f its professionals, and to offer training courses that will help to establish a benchmark for search engine marketing. The cost of a SEMPO training course can range anywhere from five hundred dollars for a fundamentals of search marketing class, to over two thousand dollars for an advanced search advertising course.

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Nov 23 2010

Here’s Why Paying For Your Traffic Is A Smart Move

Category: SEORichard @ 12:57 pm

There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good in the internet. The troubling thing is, there are maybe a tenfold or even a hundredfold of stories contradictory to theirs. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is internet based but only a handful shall succeed.


Is this through luck? That is even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the eagerness to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.


The Very Basic


Like Neo, traffic is “The One”. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldn’t have anyone to sell your products to. In the internet world traffic is the walk in customer. The more traffic you have the more people would be able to sell your products to.


But like any business that’s in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that goes in will buy, but the greater of number that do come in to browse your merchandise, the greater number of people that will buy your products. It is a simple and known fact.


But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.


Many of these success stories get their traffic from paying others. Yes that’s right; you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people that knows that your site exists; the more people would of course go to your site, that’s common sense.


While there are many ways that can get you advertising for free, this do not generate the same high volume as those methods that are getting paid. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo.


The Value of Searches


The search and will be the easiest and fastest medium in finding what a person needs in the internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks that they are the most common sites that people go to. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.


Search engines provide information to the millions of users that they have each day. They provide links to many sites that a user may be looking for. If your sites link pop up in the high ranks of the search results page, you get a great chance that they will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks.


When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. This may sound like not such a good idea, but the payoffs would tell a different story. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will never go with an empty sales day.


Paying for your Traffic


Usually, you will be charged with the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. For some search engines, you will be charged with the number of times your ad shows up when a certain keyword or keyword phrase is searched. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword for the right moment.


All the money you spend in paying for your traffic will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.

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Nov 21 2010

How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods

Category: SEORichard @ 7:24 am

Putting up a company would of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.


While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.


How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent. Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.


Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.


With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.


You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.


Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.


Write articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.


Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.


Write good content for your site. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer. You could do your on but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality. Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs.


All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man hours. Learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.


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Nov 15 2010

Global Marketing

Category: SEORichard @ 4:02 pm

Global marketing is nothing but marketing done on national and international level and which involves understanding the similarities, dissimilarities and taking advantage of the opportunities to attain the goal. Concentrating on global marketing is as important as concentrating on domestic marketing if a company is aiming to increase sales.


The domestic market has become saturated in most categories of products and services, in all industrialized countries and hence, they started to deal with other countries to increase their sales. Usually in such case, goods that are too expensive for the domestic customers to buy are exported to other well-off countries.


When a company does marketing within the boundaries of a specific county, it has to compete with other domestic companies as well as international companies who are a part of the market. The marketing steps taken by the professionals are based on the taste of a specific audience. The product might not suit the taste of customers at a higher level. The other domestic companies that plan to go global hinder the growth of such companies. They become invisible at the international level as they are unable to cope with the growing competition and might not be aware of potential competitors. The product development is dependant on the need of the local residents. Such kinds of businesses are ethnocentric and are only bothered about their performance in the domestic marketplace.


Companies planning to go global should start with export to a foreign client first. The returns wouldn’t be satisfying in the beginning. The export department can be introduced at the headquarters that deals with all the laws. There can be a possibility of becoming secondary exporters by bringing export management company into the picture, who will deal with the language problem, time difference, paperwork and customers. If managing the exports without any help, the export department can be started at an office located abroad. This office works in collaboration with the regional headquarters. But the respective offshore offices take the marketing decisions, as they will have best knowledge about the particular market they are operating in.


Multinational marketing involves marketing in many countries. The marketing is based on the requirements of different countries and the returns are rewarding. Each region should be studied individually based on development, production and marketing. Such kinds of markets are known as region centric. Global marketing involves the whole globe. The entire world is summarized as a single market and the products that are released in the market should fit the needs of any regional marketplace. Marketers all over the world make the marketing decisions. Such a kind of market is known as geocentric.


Automotive industry is one such market that saw a global boost in sales during the last fifty years. Earlier only the local companies like Ford and General Motors used to produce cars in America, but today other international competitors like Toyota and Honda are operating in the same market and have out done the local companies. Another key factor to the global marketing is the Internet, which introduced e-commerce. Businesses went going online and global. This encouraged the sales of the company and the figures are only increasing because of ever increasing Internet users. The geographical location of customers is no longer a hindrance. Global marketing management and business-to-business e-commerce is growing rapidly.


Product, price, placement and promotion are the elements of global marketing. The product created should be such that it can sell anywhere using the same method. It should consider the primary elements of all the markets. However, the language in which the product is named can be changed, where as the content can remain the same. The price is never constant. It should be decided after reviewing the market and the currency of the country. The variables which affect prices are location where the product is being produced, cost of ingredients, transportation charges, labor charges, etc.


Placement is how the product is distributed and how it reaches the targeted market. Like in third world countries, there is a lack of superstores, so they can be placed or sold at ordinary shops. After the product is developed and distributed, it should be promoted precisely known as advertising, promotion is one of the major steps of marketing and consumes major part of the budget. If it is possible to send out the same message worldwide in a relevant and cost-effective way, it sure must be put into practice but the challenge is really big.

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Nov 15 2010

Search Engine Optimization And Why You Gotta Use It

Category: SEORichard @ 6:06 am

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.


Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.


Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.


But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.


So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.


With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.


So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.


Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.


You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.


You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.


Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.


If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.


Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

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Nov 11 2010

Submitting Your Website To Search Engines

Category: SEORichard @ 10:24 am

If you have a web-based business or if a significant portion of your business is done on the web through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will achieve the same results, although, maybe effective in a small proportion.


Beware of companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are but only false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.


Before you begin to submit your website to search engines ensure your websites are thoroughly designed to the professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and the relevant content. Don’t submit websites that are incomplete. While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.


Mere submission to search engine companies does not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be high. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite sometime before they take up your site for review by human editors. One important factor to remember while submitting site is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like ‘http://www.google.com’ hardly considers submissions without sitemaps. There are many online companies that accept search engine submission services. You can choose to do it yourself with a software package and service like this one:


http://www.webposition.com/order/trial.asp?WT.mc_id=google%3A%7Bifsearch%3Asearch%7D%7Bifcontent%3Acontent%7D%3A%7Bcreative%7D%3Atrial%3A%7Bkeyword%7D&WT.srch=1


Or if you want professional help try the following sites:


http://www.addpro.com/professional_submission


http://www.submitawebsite.com/aboutus.html


Don’t use the automatic submission services.


Here is a list of the most popular Search Engines and directory companies:


Search Engines Go.com/InfoSeek AltaVista Google, HotBot Excite/Webcrawler


Directories AOL Search Inktomi Lycos Open Directory MSN, Yahoo! LookSmart Snap


Apart from the above there are thousands of search engines and directory companies, where you can submit your website to as many companies as possible. The following links gives info on other search engines and directories:


http://websearch.about.com/library/searchengine/blsearchenginesatoz.htm


http://websearch.about.com/library/tableofcontents/blsearchenginetableofcontents.htm

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Nov 09 2010

Designing A Web Crawler Friendly Web Site

Category: SEORichard @ 3:30 am

The most successful online businesses all have one thing in common. They all knew how to make search engine optimization work for them.


Search engine optimization is the art and science of making websites attractive to the internet’s search engines. The first step in successfully achieving stellar search engine optimization is to lure search engine’s web crawlers to your website. Web crawlers are computer programs that the search engines use gather data and index information from the websites. The information the web crawlers gather is used to determine the ranking of a webpage.


One of the fastest ways to hamper a web crawler is to construct a website that has frames. Most search engines have crawlers that can’t penetrate the frames, if they can’t get into a webpage to read it then that webpage remains unindexed and unranked. Two search engines, Google and Inktome, have web crawlers that are capable of penetrating frames. Before submitting your website to a search engine do some research and find out if they have a crawler that is incapable of penetrating any frames.


If you have written frames into your URL it will probably be worth your effort to go back and rewrite your URL’s. Once you have rewritten your URLs you might be surprised to find that the new addresses are easier on humans as well as web crawlers, the frameless URLs are easier to type in documents as links and references.


Once you have rewritten your URL’s it is time to start submitting your website to search engines. Some webmasters like to use an automated search engine submission service. If you decide to go with the submission service you should be aware that there will be a fee involved, the minimum fee is typically fifty-nine US dollars. This price should keep a few URLs on the search engines for a year. Other webmasters like to avoid big fees by submitting their website to individual search engine on their own.


Once your webpage is submitted to a search engine you need to sit down and design a crawler page. A crawler page is a webpage that contains nothing else expect links to every single page of your website, Use the title of each page as the as the link text. This will also give you some extra keywords that will help improve the ranking the crawlers assign to your website. Think of the crawler page as a site map to the rest of your website.


Typically, the crawler page won’t appear in the search results. This happens because the page doesn’t have enough text for the crawlers to give that individual page a high ranking, after all its nothing more then a portal to the rest of your site and your human users won’t need to use it. Don’t panic if it crawlers don’t instantly appear to index your website. There are a lot of websites available on the internet that need to be crawled, indexed, and then ranked. It can sometimes take up to three months for a web crawler to get to yours.

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Nov 04 2010

Affordable Advertising Agencies

Category: SEORichard @ 12:33 pm

Low cost internet advertising agencies are the ideal way and most recommended means to make your product or service known and for your web site to earn money. There is such a very huge range of affordable internet advertising agencies that are now found in the Net.


There are various Internet advertising agencies according to the kind of product or service they provide. Here is a list of a few of these kinds of online marketing agencies.


1. Web design agencies


These are focused on building web pages for a website. Many web developers are now offering affordable services if you just know how and where to find them.


2. Logo services


Production of web site logos is the main concern of these agencies. Hundreds of pre-designed logos could be purchased or even customized to complement your website better.


3. Copywriting Agencies


In adjunct to search engine optimization, these agencies provide quality content that targets the attention of the market you intend to tap. Looking for the best deals with copywriting services will be a cinch if you know where to look. If you prefer freelancers, they are often found with their own websites.


4. Search engine optimization companies


These companies analyze and modify websites in order to achieve the highest possible search engine ranking. They improve your website’s design and content to better attract more traffic. Link building could also be employed by these e-marketing agencies to benefit your business. They are actually a combination of all the services mentioned above. Sometimes they also go by the name of Internet marketing consultancies or something of that sort.


5. Domain registration companies


Your business’s name in the web is the business of these companies. Looking for the best amongst a wide array of these agencies is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But if you are determined enough to do your homework with these marketing services, results would be more than rewarding. Just make sure that you don’t register with those whose only intention is to rip off those who can’t afford the most reputable domain registration agencies.


These are just a few of the Internet advertising agencies that a web marketing newbie could turn to. Examining your needs first will better your chances in getting in touch with the cream of the crop of these Internet marketing agencies minus the hefty price tag.

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Nov 02 2010

Essential Tips On How To Become An Seo Expert

Category: SEORichard @ 3:31 pm

You don’t need to hire sometime to do any search engine optimization (SEO) work for you. This article outlines the essential tips that you can use so that you can become an SEO expert and quickly increase your website ranking on search engines.


If you want your website to constantly maintain a high ranking on search engines, then you must read this article.


Adding fresh keyword-rich content to your website and blog is the most essential step to increasing your ranking on search engines. It is important that you write and add new content on a regular basis. Search engines like fresh content, and if you want to succeed in SEO, you must have a laid out plan of adding content on your website on a regular basis. Your website ranking on search engines fluctuates according to the popularity of your website and this is partly influenced by the fresh content you add at any particular time. To maintain a high ranking, it is important that you add unique content on a regular basis.


Use different strategies to improve your ranking on search engines. You can write articles, press releases or participate in forums. By using different tools, you can double the results of your SEO efforts.


Monitor the performance of your website on search engines. If you want to maintain a high position on search engines, you must constantly assess your ranking and identify new ways of increasing your position on search engines. You must also keep up to date with any new techniques that you can use in SEO. Internet marketing is very dynamic, and you need to keep learning new SEO tools.


Exchange as many links as possible with other websites. It is also important that you check all your links on your regular basis to make sure that they work. High quality and relevant links can help you rank high on search engines. You will need to make an effort to identify high ranking websites that complement your website and request to exchange links with these websites.


A simple plan of action for your SEO strategy is all you need to increase and maintain your ranking on major search engines.

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