Thinking About SEO For New Website
Are you launching a new website? There’s no better time to think about search engine optimization than prior to launching a new site. By giving consideration to your on-page optimization factors, you can increase your chances of achieving top organic search results.
To prepare your site for easy indexing, be sure to follow these basis guidelines:
1. Design your site in html or similar format that minimizes the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engine spiders to read your content and prescribe the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
2. Make sure that your meta tags are coded properly and include the Robots.txt tag. Many individuals downplay the importance of meta tags. Although meta tags themselves won’t drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta tags are search engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving click-troughs.
3. Apply the proper tags to your page. H1, H2, and H3 tags are a great wall to call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use each tag at least once, but don’t force the issues. You want your text to flow and appear normal.
In addition to ensuring that you’ve made your page easy to access and presented text that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. So often, web designers get caught up with on page factors, that they overlook the requirements for establishing a foundation that supports long-term initiatives.
In particular, consider adding pages that you can add to over time that support link building and accessibility for search engine spiders. Be sure to include:
1. An html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on you site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly. Your sitemap should be in both html as well as xml. Although users would not access the xml sitemap, search engine spiders use this version to crawl websites. Additionally, key search engine submission resources like Google’s Webmasters Tools require xml site map versions.
2. Include a partners page. Previously referred to as a links page, the partners page is essential for reciprocal linking. This strategy isn’t as powerful as developing one-way links, but until your site has been assigned a Google PR, one-way links can be difficult to acquire. So begin your link exchange program with a partners page that allows you add or remove link quickly and easily.
3. Submission pages that encourage new content. One of the most powerful seo techniques is the addition of new content. Make it easy for your users to add or submit content to your website. When search engines see new content, they rejoice. Don’t underestimate how important it is to make it simple for your browsers to add or submit content.
When focusing on search engine optimization, especially with a new website, follow the basic ideas outlined above. There are a number of other factors to consider as well. However, you should always start with a strong foundation – a site design that meets basic SEO standards but one that also supports your long range search engine optimization goals.
Search Engine Optimization Provides the Greatest ROI
Today it’s understood that you must have a have a high quality website for your company. So my question is why there are so many enterprises that do not focus their attention on optimizing their website?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be defined as improving a site’s list ranking on various search engines. When your site is optimized to the fullest of its potential, it will be listed above all competitors. Potential clients come to your site first, to see what you have to offer as opposed to your competition.
SEO is free, has great results, and is rewarding. As a free source of business, the internet allows companies to really capitalize on the open market. Tremendous opportunity knocks, and those who answer can take full advantage of what the internet can offer their company.
Once you own your domain and have it hosted (usually by an Online Marketing Company), you can make any changes you wish. Having your company available online is a free way to market your company over the internet. A key feature of your company’s website is it can be used as a free online marketing tool. The only cost you incur is the time you put forth to gain maximum exposure for your site. However, that time put forward now will pay off in the end on a regular basis.
When you as a website publisher take the time to optimize your site (or hire someone optimize it for you), you are building your companies market value. The higher you are listed on search engine results, the more respect you will gain as a company. As a consumer, the mind can not help to think that the websites listed on top are the best. So why not spend the time to be atop of the competition?
When your site is listed above competition; the chances are more in your favor to win the business. The reward you will receive upon completion of your site being optimized will show itself. Web surfers will be stopping in to see what your business has to offer which in turn will lead to more business. If you use your site to your advantage, then it can be a great way to function as a lead generator.
Optimizing your web site really plays a large impact on your Return on Investment (ROI). This is mainly because your investment is time and your return is money. The only thing you are risking is a missed afternoon of golf. Some businesses that have the resources are using Google Adwords as opposed to taking the time to use SEO.
Google Adwords functions the same way your site can function if optimized. That is by listing your website at the top of the search criteria results. However, you must pay for the placement you want under Google Adwords where SEO is free. Google Adwords has still been proven to be an effective marketing scheme to attract more viewers to your site, which in turn will lead to more business.
One drawback to Google Adwords is your ROI will be on a different scale now because you must actually pay for each time your site is referred to by Google. Take this SEO specialist’s advice and sit down and optimize your site.
If you do not optimize now and wait, you will be falling behind your competitors. Your website is your focal business point for reference. You must make sure that your site is operating to its fullest potential to ensure that you are receiving the maximum amount of clients that you can. The time you put forth now will be of great value to you in the future.
SEO Tactics To Bring You Tons Of Website Visitors
No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms.. SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.
Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche – you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.
Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time.
1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.
2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.
3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it – keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site – make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.
4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.
5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.
6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality back-links and it still works. Writing short 500 – 700 word informative helpful articles with your back links in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and back-links. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including Submit Your Article, Isnare, The phantom writers… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.
7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts – a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.
8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.
9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.
10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO – you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.
First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you’re pursuing – your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That’s why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what’s been searched for or discussed.
Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site – tops in your niche – the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.
Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you’re into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.
Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you’re seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com .
SEO Design Is Essential For Online Success
Before designing a brand new web page, website or blog, there is a lot to think about. Some things you may consider include whether or not you have chosen the right niche to focus on. Have you organized your content in a manner that works well for SEO? Also, have you chosen a URL that makes it easy for search engines to find and rank your website?
Search engine optimization of web site design is easy if you know what to do. Even if you have done all of the planning and preparation that you can to guarantee a functional website, you must consider the needs of search engine spiders and SEO.
The beginning step is to build your web site in html and use cascading style sheets (CSS). Style sheets keeps your code to a minimum and helps to provide a consistent look across your website. The design of your site needs to be clean while providing easy to use navigation.
Make sure that each of your web pages uses unique meta tags. Your meta tags should include the site keywords you are optimizing for. The meta tags signal the search engine spiders as to the type of content contained within your site. Your web site template should always place your keyword phrase at the top of your page and end of your page.
One simple way to apply this technique is by beginning your title tag with a keyword phrase. Additionally, include a copyright notice followed by your keyword phrase in a clean simple flow. One example is Copyright 2009. WebmastersBookofSecrets.com Marketing Expert. Marketing expert in this example is the keyword and is the last text on your page.
Here are some additional SEO design tips that can help improve rankings. First, include your keyword phrase in an H1 header. Next, keep your keyword density between 5 and 6 percent and finally, treat your keyword phrase is in bold, italic, and underline at least once per page.
By using simple seo design techniques that help expose your keyword phrase to search engine spiders and making each page simple to scan, your website ranking will be improved. To take advantage of seo design, keep things simple and the results will follow.
How To Find SEO Consultants That Get Results
If your web site is a major source or revenue, or could be, then you should have a formal search engine optimization program that monitors and improves rankings on a daily basis. Now you might be thinking that you don’t have the resources necessary to implement a productive SEO program, but the costs of not doing so are significant.
Starting an SEO program for your business is easier than you think. There are numerous SEO consultants and experts that can show you how to radically improve your rankings for much less than you might think. In fact, many search engine optimization consultants can save you significant dollars if managed properly.
Getting the most from your SEO consultant requires a number of considerations. I have found that the most productive engagements around optimization and SEO all have these same factors in common. By adhering to these principals, mutual expectations are set and each party has a clear understanding of what is being delivered by whom.
The first step is finding a credible source. There are many people out there who claim to be search engine optimization experts but have nothing to show for it. Find a legitimate company, ask for references, or find someone who has a proven track record and is an authority on the topic. A good bet is to find someone who has achieved number one rankings for their website or the web sites of their clients.
The second step is to mutually agree upon what’s being delivered. Most clients feel that by paying a search engine optimization consultant a sum of money that their site is going to instantly rank number one on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. I can tell you first hand that‘s not the case. The purpose of an seo consultant is to help you construct an effective strategy for the long term optimization of your web site.
The third and final step is to assemble a team to work with the consultant and implement his findings. Seventy percent or so of the companies I’ve worked with were very interested in learning how to optimize their websites but couldn’t or weren’t willing to follow through on what it takes to succeed. Commit time and resources dedicated to implementing the consultant’s finding and you will see the true value of your investment.
Whether you’re launching new website or trying to improve the rankings of an existing site, it’s important that you find a reliable resource that can help you succeed. Define what success looks like for both you and the consultant you will be working with. By doing so, you’re creating a mutual understanding of the work that’s being done and clearly understand what it means to your business.