My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’

In this article, we are going to discuss a major problems involving keyword selection for existing businesses. It is a simple mistake, but one most people do not think about.

Keyword Perspective &ndash Avoid This Mistake At All Cost

The two prime Internet marketing platforms are pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. The issue we are going to discuss today applies equally to either of these platforms as well as any other internet advertising you undertake.

The biggest mistake most businesses make with marketing is keyword perspective. Keyword perspective refers to the point of view one has when developing keywords for any type of Internet marketing. There are primarily two perspectives, but each only works with one audience. If you get them crossed up, you are in for a nightmare.

The industry perspective is usually the area where I see the biggest problems. Industry perspective refers to using industry terminology to develop keywords instead of using terms your prospects actually use. For example, a mortgage professional might view HELOC [home equity line of credit] as a keyword. Most prospects, however, are not going to search for this acronym. Instead, they will search for home equity line of credit or simply line of credit. When you are marketing to the general public, do not use industry terms. Instead, use the terms your prospects apply to your services or products.

The opposite of the industry perspective is found in the business-to- business field. If you are providing services or products to businesses, than you may very well want to use industry terms! If you sell medical equipment to hospitals, your prospects are going to be both sophisticated and using technical terms in their searches. They will search for medial collateral ligament isolation braces instead of knee brace. In the business-to-business scenario, use of laymen’s terms for keywords my kill your marketing plan before it gets off the ground.

Whatever your business, picking keywords is all about knowing your audience. Focus on terms your prospects actually use and you will have a good starting point for your marketing plan.

In May of 2006, among other announcements, Google announced Google Co-op. This article is a follow-on article to a previous article, “Google Co-Op Overview”, which provided a high-level overview of Google Co-op. This article will go into one of the components of Google Co-Op, Topics, in more detail than was covered in the previous article.

Google Co-Op is important to users for several reasons. Google Co-Op allows users to contribute information that will help Google to improve search results for everyone. In addition, Google Co-Op allows an end-user to customize their own search experience so that information that is more relevant and trusted will appear at the top of the user’s search results. Users accomplish this by subscribing to “trusted” sources of information. Information from those trusted sources will appear at the top of a user’s search results for relevant searches.

Google Co-Op is a beta-test service now being offered by Google. Anyone with a Google account may participate. While still in its infancy, Google Co-Op represents Google’s efforts to embrace social web and social search concepts in a major way to help improve Google search results. Google Co-op consists of two things:

1. Topics, which are simply a means of labeling web content

2. Subscribed links, which are a means for users to subscribe to a particular web site’s content

Topics can further be sub-divided into two things:

1. The ability to create an entire categorization or labeling scheme

2. The ability to simply provide labels for web content, which Google calls annotations

The remainder of this article will focus on the annotations aspect of Google Topics.

Annotations to URLs

Annotating URLs is perhaps the easiest part of Google Co-Op to understand. It also requires the least amount of technical expertise to implement. A “topic” is simply Google’s way of saying “area of interest”. Topics are a labeling or categorization scheme. Topics allow users a way of providing labels (which may also be referred to as tags, or categories) for information on the web (represented by URLs). Labels may be provided for an entire web site, portions of a web site, or even a specific web page. These “labels” provide some indication of the topic or topics for a given web site or page. In essence, they provide additional information on what the web site is all about.

Anyone with a Google account can label web sites. Google refers to the process of providing labels for web sites as “Annotating URLs”. An annotation is simply the association of a label, or multiple labels, with a URL. For example, a travel site might get the label “destination_guide”.

Users may use labels for topics that Google already has under development, which include: health, destination guides, autos, computer & video games, photo & video equipment, and stereo & home theater. Users may also develop their own labels for topics. For example, if a user has an interest in “wine” they may develop labels for the topic wine, which may include “wine_regions”, “wine_types“, etc. They can then use these labels to annotate sites that deal with wine.

An end user may submit their annotations to Google in one of two formats: 1) in a tab-delimited format (which can be created using Microsoft Excel or any spreadsheet); or 2) in an XML file. Perhaps the easiest format for most users to deal with is simply to create a spreadsheet where the first column contains a URL or URL pattern, and the subsequent columns contain labels, one label to a column. Further information that may be associated with a URL in subsequent columns includes:

• Score – a ranking of relevance from 0 to 1 (0 to 100%)
• Comment




• Attributes – user defined attributes which may only be included in the tab-delimited file format

Annotation Examples

A few examples will go a long way to illustrate annotating URLs. If I were using a tab-delimited file to annotate a travel related web site it might look something like this:

URL&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Label&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Label&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Label&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Score Comment

.travelsite.com/* &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp sightseeing&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp museums &nbsp&nbsp shopping&nbsp&nbsp 1 &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Detailed destination information

If I were using an XML file to annotate the same travel related web site it might look something like this:

<Annotations>


<file>travelsite-annotations.xml</file>

<Annotation>


<about>.travelsite.com/*</about>

<Label>


<name>sightseeing</name>


<score>1</score>


<Comment>Detailed destination information</Comment>

</Label>

<Label>


<name>museums</name>


<score>1</score>


<Comment>Detailed destination information</Comment>

</Label>

<Label>


<name>shopping</name>


<score>1</score>


<Comment>Detailed destination information</Comment>

</Label>

</Annotation>

</Annotations>

Conventions for Labels

There are some simple conventions that should be followed when labeling content. First it is important to understand that labels may be applied to URLs or wildcard URLs. Using wildcards makes it much easier to label a lot of content with a few statements. For example:

• Labels applied to .mywebsite.com/ would only apply to that specific page of the web site
• Labels applied to .mywebsite.com/* would apply to all URLs that starts with the URL “.mywebsite.com”
• Labels applied .mywebsite.com/*tips would apply to all URLs that start with the URL “.mywebsite.com” and contain the word “tips”

A single URL may have multiple labels. If using a tab-delimited file, each label must appear in its own column.

Labels should be all lower case with all punctuation and conjunctions (and, or) removed. For example, “hardware and software” would become “hardware_software”.

Labels should be as short as possible and as unambiguous as possible. Watch out for words that can mean multiple things.

Additional Information

There are many good places to find additional information. The first is the Google Co-Op Site (.google.com/coop) where they have posted a Topics Developers Guide. The Google Co-Op FAQ is also helpful. There is also a good article entitled “How to Use Google Co-op” at Google Blogoscoped (blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-05-11-n40.html).

Why is Labeling Content Important?

The process of labeling content will benefit everyone in several ways. Labels will provide Google with a vast amount of information about web sites, potentially down to a very granular, or individual page level. If an individual’s annotations are found to improve the quality of the search results, they will be shown to everyone. In essence, over time, Google will use annotations and other aspects of Google Co-Op to improve search results.

Conclusion

Annotating URLs is a relatively low effort task for individuals that can reap benefits for everyone – better and more relevant search results. While still in its infancy, and going through the growing pains that are normal for services that are in beta test, Google Co-op clearly has a lot of promise to enable Google to provide much more powerful and relevant search results to users.

So you’ve got a product or service, but no money to market it with? Well, a lack of capital will make marketing a lot harder be it can certainly be done.

If you are trying to market your website for free, don’t try every hyped up free advertising method that you see. Most of them don’t work. The best free methods are the simple ones that just require some work.

1 &ndash Search Engine Optimization

You can optimize your site and start gaining good rankings on the search engines without spending a penny. There are two basic parts of search engine optimization &ndash optimizing the webpages on your site and building links from other sites to your site. Both of these can be done for free. There are plenty of good resources on the internet that will teach you how to optimize your site and gain good rankings &ndash just use google to find one and get started!

2- Link Exchanges

There are many websites out there who would be happy to exchange links with you. While doing link exchanges may get you some traffic, it’s main purpose is for search engine optimization

3- Article Marketing

Write articles related to your website’s industry and submit them to article distribution sites, like .isnare.com Other webmasters will publish your article, with a link to your site at the bottom. This is an excellent way to get some traffic and also build links for SEO purposes.

4-Classifieds

Some products or services you can sell via classifieds. Just search the internet for free classifieds. One of the most important things to remember with free classifieds is to test and see if they are working.

These are some of the tried and true free advertising methods. There are others. There is plenty of traffic on the net &ndash go get some for your website today!

I was referred to a prospective client recently that had their website redesigned. They paid $60,000 for a site that really does nothing for them. It is a simple brochure site that provides visitors nothing and it certainly does nothing to convert traffic into sales. Since all their budget went to design, they have no money left over to properly market the site. Mistake #1, don’t pay $60,000 for a branding exercise.

A corporate website is about supporting the business. The beauty of the Internet is there is no guessing. You can measure pretty much anything. What are you trying to accomplish? Increase traffic? Generate leads? Increase sales? If it is yes to one of these questions, then a $60,000 investment should get you another $600,00 to your bottom-line? Can a brochure site deliver a 80-95% ROI?

Web design is a commodity today. The cost of design should represent about 25% of your total spend. Design costs are competitive today, so spending more than you have to should be the last thing you do. There are excellent open source Content Management Systems (CMS) that give you the power to manage your own content. The cost of the software is $0 to you. We recommend using either Plone or Joomla. Both of these platforms provide you with Web 2.0 compliant back-end at low cost for setup and maintenance.

The value in web design is working with companies that can properly market what you do. To properly market the site, you should be spending 10-12x what you should spend in design. So, it is possible to get a Web 2.0 website at an affordable cost. If you are a small company that is spending $4,000-$8,000 on a basic website, you should plan over 12 months to spend an additional $30,000-$80,000 on marketing. The dollars spent on marketing brings the traffic to the site. Simple rule, more traffic through the front door means more business.

Unlike other advertising, you can control your spend and measure your ROI pretty quickly. You can turn your marketing dollars on and off depending on the performance, it is all measurable.

DeFabis Photography is an example of a client that went through the redesign process. We built a Search Engine Friendly website that allows him to manage content on the site. Prior to working with us, his website was not listed in the top 100 on Google for the popular keywords. Since working with us, his visitors and page views have increased. But most important, he has doubled his bookings from this time last year. And, he did not spend $60,000 on his web design.

If you need help in evaluating a prospective vendor, here are some question that may help you understand their knowledge:

1. How do capture visitor traffic off the Internet? Can you track their movement through my site? If so, how?

2. How do manage pay per click advertising dollars to ensure I am maximizing my spend and not wasting money?

3. How do you measure whether my site is friendly to my users?

4. How many page views would you estimate my site would get to determine the right level of hosting?

5. What things will you need to change on my website? What things can I change on my own?

6. If I want to change the look, does it require changes to the backend scripting on the site?

7. What will it take to add a new page to match an ad we are running to the new site? For instance, I want to advertise a special and build a page specific for it, what will it take for us to do this?

8. What do you anticipate the average cost per lead for the website to be?

9. Who owns the source code to the site?

So, think about your objectives. Think about what you want to accomplish and spend your money according to the results you want to achieve. A pretty website just does not generate the type of results you should and can get using the Internet. Don’t get mugged for $60,000. It’s bad for your business.

If you own a web site yourself or know someone that does, you are probably familiar with the importance of internet marketing tools. The site may have a professional design, quality product or service, great content and functionality, but if the right internet marketing strategies are not utilized, your site may not be attracting the key to real success, highly targeted traffic. Getting a lot of consistent traffic has very little to do with the web site itself, but rather how the sites owner or webmaster choose to advertise the site. There are hundreds even thousands of sites competing on the web today, so you must use the most effective internet marketing tools to achieve targeted results.

There are many different internet marketing tools that can be used effectively, all of which are designed to increase your web sites traffic. Simply put, you must find a way to get people to your site. Put yourself in the “shoes” of your prospective visitors and clients. “Where do they go to do web searches?” is a key question that must be answered and can be quite simple to answer, the search engine. The webs most popular sites are search engines and portals, therefore, you should focus your internet marketing efforts to the search engine.

When surfers browse search engines, they will be more inclined to view a site placed high on the search engine, as opposed to a site with poor search engine placement. With that in mind, you must use the correct internet marketing tools to build a strong (high) search engine ranking. This is where the term Search Engine Optimization is derived from. SEO, as it is called commonly, is a set of methods and tactics aimed at improving your search engine ranking and the visibility of your site in search engine results.

Search engines index sites in several ways, one of which is by looking at the keyword density of the web site, or the sites content. Content alone, is one of the most valuable internet marketing tools to utilize. If your site has excellent relevant keywords aimed towards achieving a high search engine ranking, as well as providing valuable information, you can expect a high search engine position. But because of the high competition of web sites using the same internet marketing methods, you must continuously find new and better ways of attracting targeted traffic.

Today, one of the most popular and effective internet marketing tools is the use of Pay Per Click advertising. This method involves bidding for a particular keyword in a specific search engine, the search engine then compares the bids of all the merchants for that specific keyword, and the highest bid gets the top placement for that specific keyword search. For example, if you bid $.75 and a competitor bids $.73, you will be awarded the higher position. This internet marketing tool is being utilized by thousands of web sites on hundreds of PPC search engines. Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture, and the new MSN Adcenter are the three most popular sites who offer pay per click ad services today.

Content and pay per click advertising are just two of many internet marketing tools that you can utilize to improve your search engine optimization and achieve high web site traffic. There are literally hundreds of other techniques and methods, both free and paid, that you can use successfully to increase your sites visitors and profits. Internet marketing tools are the true key to SEO and generating profits in the highly-competitive online business battlefront that we call the Internet.

.supermoneymakingsecrets.com

Nowadays, many people save money to quit their day jobs in hopes of achieving their own customized version of the American Dream by starting what is commonly known as an e-commerce business or a “dot com” venture. They then proceed to spend the savings of their labor on great looking, functional and hopefully practical websites. However, a large percentage of such venturesome warriors that take the initiative to quit a steady job and embark on the bumpy road of e-”self employment” do not end up reaping the fruits of their courage.

The initial phases of website development both financially and emotionally drain the average venturous individual to a point that at the end of the process they are impatiently waiting for miraculous profit to be pouring their way. In reality, this seldom happens since there are thousands of such individuals both from the past and the present on the very same path striving to prosper. In order for a website to be profitable, it would have to contend in the race for traffic against hundreds of thousands, or even millions of competitors.

It is possible to attract visitors to your website via countless means however the best and the most efficient are what have been rounded up under the roof of Online Marketing. Online or Internet Marketing addresses the concerns of all those website owners that are astounded at the low returns on their investments. It helps strategize a plan to increase the popularity and traffic of the website and tackle the issues of low profits. The most important aspects of Internet Marketing are as follows:

• Spreading the Word: Since other online venues require a relatively longer initial period of time to yield results, it is quick and efficient to spread the word about your website via submitting articles and news releases to be published. An informative and useful article will intrigue other website owners to syndicate the article hence exposing your website to the visitors of their own websites. On the other hand a carefully prepared news release if published at the right time will drive major media publishers to run stories on your website which in turn will expose your website to a very wide base of potential visitors and in turn converted customers.
• Networking: Propagating the word about your website is a great way to jumpstart your internet marketing campaign, however you need stability from within to be able to sustain your website’s popularity. By partnering or simply having a relationship with websites in and out of your industry you will be able to increase your website link base and provide a one-stop solution for your visitors. You can achieve this by being an active participant in online forums, chat sessions and even seminars not to mention offline venues such as business mixers and conferences.
• Search Engines: Once you have created an initial surge of visitors via press releases and worked on networking to maintain your traffic, your website will be seasoned and ready to benefit from a very precious medium that lets targeted visitors come to you rather than you going after them. Search engines are inundated with searchers looking for products and services in virtually every single industry and category imaginable. By using keyword popularity tools you can find out approximately how many people search for keywords relevant to your website on a daily basis. Once you find the keywords that would bring valuable visitors to your website, then you can target them by optimizing your website. This process is referred to as Search Engine Optimization which will be discussed in much more detail in future articles.
  
  




• Refining the User Interface: Refining the User Interface is certainly one of the most ignored yet extremely important aspects of owning and operating a website. You can be getting hundreds of unique visitors on a daily basis to your website yet making less profit than a direct competitor of yours with half the traffic. The secret lies in your user interface consisting of elements such as forms, navigation, contents, links, buttons, customization, localization and more. By using these elements in the correct places and at the correct time and constantly monitoring your visitor retention and conversation rates, you can not only increase your conversation ratio and therefore your profit but also maintain a larger visitor base potentially creating word of mouth and return business.
  
  

The above are the main areas in which you have to be active in order for your online marketing campaign to be successful. However it is sometimes not possible to achieve the best results in all areas without rigorous research and extensive training. This is where internet marketing firms come to your help in devising and implementing a successful campaign. Internet Marketing is virtually the only way to turn your investment of time, patience and money into measurable profit that could get you closer to achieving your goals and fulfilling your dreams. This is why I invite you to read my future articles where I will be providing more detailed information on each of the above categories as well as information on how to find do-it-yourself information and shop for internet marketing services.

The most popular question asked by many online marketers is how to drive more traffic to their websites. The answer to this question is easy: "Have your website exposure to as many internet surfers as possible, once people can find your website, there will be traffic flow into your website". But to make your website successfully expose to internet users is not an easy task. Efforts, strategies and techniques need to put in place in order to make it as success. Below are 8 common online marketing techniques used by most online marketers to drive internet traffic to their websites:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your website since over 60% of people who are looking for products and services use search engines to locate them. If your website is ranked high in the related keyword search by the search engines, you will get tons of free internet traffic to your website.

One of the ways to optimize your website to be search engines friendly is by generating back links from other websites to your website. When websites provide a link to your site, the search engines deem your site as valuable and this affects your position in the listings.

2. Article Writing & Publishing

Articles are the greatest tool for online marketing. It helps in SEO by generating back links to your website and it also helps in getting exposure for your website through your articles’ hyperlinks.

By writing short articles on the topic related to your website, products or services, you can offer these articles for other website owners or newsletter publishers to use by submitting them to article directories, forums or blogs. When the publishers use your articles in their ezines or websites, they will remain your bio information which contains links to your website at the bottom of your articles, which means that the publishers will contribute their link from their websites to yours. These back links are counted in SEO. When their visitors who read your articles and if they want to know more about your products or services may click the hyperlinks at the bottom of your articles to reach to your website.

3. Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay Per Click is advertising provided by the search engine providers (Google, Yahoo! and others) where you pay for top placement. Most search engines give top positions to the highest bidder. It is a quick way to have your ad on the first page of the keyword search as listed in the search engines. There is a catch: you have to pay for every click to your web site. Make a budget and stick to it and make sure to monitor your account, those clicks add up fast.

4. Affiliate Marketing

An affiliate program is another way to drive traffic to your web site. Your affiliates are your commissions-based sales people who make money when they sell your products. They drive traffic to your web site in exchange for commissions on sales. If you don’t want to manage your affiliates yourself, you could subscribe to affiliate network such as ClickBank if your products are digital items. ClickBank marketplace is able to exposure your products to thousands of affiliates who are looking for products to sell online.

In Summary

Any internet business will die without traffic stream into their website. If you already get started your website for online business, it’s time for you to work out a marketing plan to flood it with traffic. The above 4 online marketing techniques are time tested & proven methods to drive more traffic to a website.

Scott Bamboo is the author & webmaster for .ultimatearticlemarketer.com.

You can get more information on online home buisiness at .ultimatearticlemarketer.com/articles/dropshipping1.php

and Article Directories List at .ultimatearticlemarketer.com/articles/articledirectories.php