A good looking and user friendly website is an extremely important asset to your
success on the Internet. However without traffic, even a well designed site will not produce results for you. The best websites are those that are both attractive and easy to use by your human users, and at the same time, convenient for the search engine robots that are trying to find and collect data from your site.
Oftentimes a site that may look good to your eye has some design flaws that impair its search engine friendliness. Here are a few things to look for when designing new sites or optimizing an existing site.
1. Where does your first line of text begin? You may think, “that’s easy, the first line of text is right at the top?” If you view your web page using Notepad or the html view of popular editors you may be surprised to find that the first line of your actual searchable text may be pushed down, 100 lines or more, by long strings of java script and by the html code that defines your tables.
The higher your text appears in this html view of the site, the easier it is for the robot to find it and put it in the search engine data base. You can save space in your html code by copying your java script and placing it in an external file uploaded to your server. Instead of having 50 lines of java script commands in your html code, there will only be one line pointing to the separate file with the java script.
Similarly if you simplify your table structure, your searchable text will become more prominent. The left-hand navigation bar, for example, with its separate graphic elements each in its own row, may be a place where you can economize on your code by merging the rows into one cell.
2. Is your website graphics-predominant, at the expense of searchable text? If your site begins with a splash page, such as a lovely page-filling picture of the ocean and no text except, “enter here”, then you are wasting a big opportunity. Search engines consider your main page, the one you reach when you land at www.yourcompany.com, to be the most important page. Your main text with its important keywords should be on your first page. If you already have splash page, you should consider scrapping it altogether, or at least adding a paragraph with a powerful capsule description of your activity.
If your site has a flash-only first page then the text message on that page is not visible, except for what you are able to put in your title and description tags. Search engine robots cannot read the text message that has been put in the form of a flash movie. If you want to use flash, and also do well in search engine rankings it is better to make a hybrid page where the flash is surrounded by a normal html page with text. The text around the flash movie should be optimized so that the page ranks well in search engine queries for your important keywords.
3. Have you unknowingly rendered important text as a graphic? If your site is about “wireless widgets made in California” then you would want some prominent text near the top of the page with these words. You may already have it but the text has been changed into a beautiful gif or jpg graphic either by your designer or by your html editing program. Search engines will not give that nice-looking graphic the same importance as it would text written as an H1 or H2 header. Some popular html editors render entire paragraphs as gif graphic images. All the text that appears in the image becomes almost invisible to the search engines. I say almost invisible because you can always put an alt text for any graphic, however this alt text is not weighed as heavily as normal text set as bold or in headers. So, check your pages and make sure that your text is normal text and not an image.
4. Can Search Engines Follow Your Site’s Link structure? If your site employs a drop-down menu that is run with java script, then search engines may find your main page, but they won’t follow the links to your interior pages. Similarly if your navigation area is an image map, a graphic with “hot spots” that link to your various internal pages then the search engines cannot and will not find the other pages of your site. To get maximum traffic it is imperative to have as many of your pages as possible indexed in the big search engines. You can accomplish this by adding a text-based navigation area at the bottom of your pages or a site-map page with text links to all your interior pages.
If you pay attention to these design considerations, you can greatly improve your site’s chances of appearing near the top of search results.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
SEO Studio
When it comes to search engine optimization, there is no free lunch or magic shortcut that will enable you to get top rankings without any effort or merit. However, there are a few submission, optimization and ranking tools which, when placed in the hands of competent web managers, can greatly ease the task of conducting website promotion campaigns. Here is a brief survey of one product that might be useful for you.
SEO Studio is a comprehensive software package that helps with the following tasks: 1. search engine submission 2. keyword analysis and selection 3. conducting reciprocal link campaigns and 4. checking the position of web pages in search engines queries.
Before I get into the capabilities of SEO Studio, one thing should be said: it is possible to conduct all of these tasks “by hand” especially if you have only one or two sites and if you have a good grasp of what is involved. For example, SEO Studio has a great submission tool but if you only have one site all you have to do is make a manual submission to Yahoo, and get a few links to your site from web pages that are already indexed in search engines and you will end up being listed in the major search engines due to the work of their spiders which follow links on the pages that are already in the data base. When the robots find a new page, they add it to the index.
That said, if you want to be sure to be included in search engines, and if you have several sites to take care of, the SEO Studio submission tool is handy. It allows you to automatically submit your site to around 60 top search engines. In addition, the tool is constantly updated and when you log onto the program you can get the updates and changes. For example, a recent update added the new MSN search engine to the list.
If you are a webmaster with several sites or handle the submission for client sites, the SEO Studio provides reports on the submissions. It also allows you to track manual submissions as well and record them in the reports.
Keyword Analysis and Reciprocal Link Tools
At the heart of search engine optimization is the selection and placement of keywords. SEO studio has a tool that allows you to check the keyword density in the various places of your web page: meta tags, headers, link text, alt image text, image names, file names, bold text etc. You can also use the tool to check the web pages of your competitors as well. It also has a feature that lets you connect with the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and Espotting to get alternative keywords. The keyword analyzer is powerful, but you still have to decide how often you want your keywords to appear on your web page.
Like the keyword analyzer the reciprocal ranking tool is multifunctional. It makes automated searches on several search engines looking for link partners according to the keyword parameters that you set. It retrieves information (page rank, Alexa rank, inbound links) about the potential partner sites, and also has a link campaign management tool.
Ranking Tools
Checking the rankings of your websites in various search engines can really seem like an insurmountable task. Have you ever gone through page after page to find out where your site stood in Google? SEO Studio has a tool to automate this process, but before you start using this tool there are a few things to consider.
First, here is a shortcut to analyzing your standing in the search engines. If your web host has a good statistics program (such as Webalizer or Awstats) or if you are able to analyze your access logs, you will see which keywords and keyword phrases people are using when they reach your website and you will see which search engines were used in these queries. These are the keywords for which you rank well, and if some keywords are not appearing in the queries then it means that you do not rank well for these items. You don’t have to sift through pages and pages of search engine results to realize this.
In addition, search engines do not like automated queries made on their data bases because it ties up their resources. Rank checking programs may sometimes be considered a violation of the search engine’s terms of use and could result in penalization of urls associated with the violation. SEO Studio says that its queries are search engine friendly, and I have used the product without any adverse affects. Overall the SEO studio at the price of $79 for a full version has been well worth it for me and I haven’t even explored the full use of all the tools. It would probably also meet the needs of anyone else who handles the promotion chores of several websites at a time. You can download a free version of the software and try it out by visiting http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com/
SEO Studio is a comprehensive software package that helps with the following tasks: 1. search engine submission 2. keyword analysis and selection 3. conducting reciprocal link campaigns and 4. checking the position of web pages in search engines queries.
Before I get into the capabilities of SEO Studio, one thing should be said: it is possible to conduct all of these tasks “by hand” especially if you have only one or two sites and if you have a good grasp of what is involved. For example, SEO Studio has a great submission tool but if you only have one site all you have to do is make a manual submission to Yahoo, and get a few links to your site from web pages that are already indexed in search engines and you will end up being listed in the major search engines due to the work of their spiders which follow links on the pages that are already in the data base. When the robots find a new page, they add it to the index.
That said, if you want to be sure to be included in search engines, and if you have several sites to take care of, the SEO Studio submission tool is handy. It allows you to automatically submit your site to around 60 top search engines. In addition, the tool is constantly updated and when you log onto the program you can get the updates and changes. For example, a recent update added the new MSN search engine to the list.
If you are a webmaster with several sites or handle the submission for client sites, the SEO Studio provides reports on the submissions. It also allows you to track manual submissions as well and record them in the reports.
Keyword Analysis and Reciprocal Link Tools
At the heart of search engine optimization is the selection and placement of keywords. SEO studio has a tool that allows you to check the keyword density in the various places of your web page: meta tags, headers, link text, alt image text, image names, file names, bold text etc. You can also use the tool to check the web pages of your competitors as well. It also has a feature that lets you connect with the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and Espotting to get alternative keywords. The keyword analyzer is powerful, but you still have to decide how often you want your keywords to appear on your web page.
Like the keyword analyzer the reciprocal ranking tool is multifunctional. It makes automated searches on several search engines looking for link partners according to the keyword parameters that you set. It retrieves information (page rank, Alexa rank, inbound links) about the potential partner sites, and also has a link campaign management tool.
Ranking Tools
Checking the rankings of your websites in various search engines can really seem like an insurmountable task. Have you ever gone through page after page to find out where your site stood in Google? SEO Studio has a tool to automate this process, but before you start using this tool there are a few things to consider.
First, here is a shortcut to analyzing your standing in the search engines. If your web host has a good statistics program (such as Webalizer or Awstats) or if you are able to analyze your access logs, you will see which keywords and keyword phrases people are using when they reach your website and you will see which search engines were used in these queries. These are the keywords for which you rank well, and if some keywords are not appearing in the queries then it means that you do not rank well for these items. You don’t have to sift through pages and pages of search engine results to realize this.
In addition, search engines do not like automated queries made on their data bases because it ties up their resources. Rank checking programs may sometimes be considered a violation of the search engine’s terms of use and could result in penalization of urls associated with the violation. SEO Studio says that its queries are search engine friendly, and I have used the product without any adverse affects. Overall the SEO studio at the price of $79 for a full version has been well worth it for me and I haven’t even explored the full use of all the tools. It would probably also meet the needs of anyone else who handles the promotion chores of several websites at a time. You can download a free version of the software and try it out by visiting http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com/
website's statistics
In the early days of the Internet it was common to visit a web site and see a counter informing you that "you are the 118,456th visitor to this site", and various webmasters would proudly talk of how many "hits" their sites were getting. Now, things have changed and you will mostly find counters on amateur sites, and wiser webmasters now know that the term "hits" doesn't really mean much.
The term hit refers to a request for a file on your web site. When someone visits your web page, they request your URL, but in order to see the page, they also have to get all the graphic files that are located on your page. So, one visitor to your page may be requesting 25 different files, and thus you have 25 hits.
The counters of the Internets early days only measured whether someone requested a particular page where the counter was located. They did not give any indication of what the visitor activity was like on the other pages of the site. Those counters often did not differentiate between a "unique visitor" and total visitors. The number of unique visitors is the number of different people (as measured by their computer's distinct IP number) as opposed to total visitors, which could even be only one person visiting the page many times. (I used to visit my first site a few times a day to see how I was doing!)
So what then is the professional and up-to-date way of gathering statistics and what are the statistics that really count?
Web servers keep logs of all visitor activity. When someone visits your site, he or she requests the various files on the site. The log records all of these requests and records other vital information as well including: the referrer page (or the last page where the surfer was prior to entering your site), what operating system the surfer is using, what screen resolution he or she is using, what search terms he or she made to request your site and a lot of other vital data that could be crucial to your ability to have Internet success or failure.
If you would look a the raw logs of your site you will see a long text file with the date of each entry and would see a few interesting items but you would not be able to put them together very well due to the volume of information. (a line of text for each file requested). There are log analysis programs that do this work for you. One way of using them is to download the log file from your server. Your host should be able to tell you where the file is located, and you can retrieve it using an FTP program. The log file is then fed into the analysis program and the results are generated. There are many programs that do this work. I got started with a simple program (open web scope-and there is free version available). Alternatively, your host may have an analysis program preinstalled on the server, and the results may be able to be seen online (some hosts have the Webalizer program installed for their client's use)
So what are the things to look for when analyzing the logs?
You should look for the number of unique visitors per day. This will give you an idea of how many people are viewing your site and will give you a broad overview of how you are doing.
Another indication of overall activity on the site is the number of "page views" per day.. Unlike hits, page-views refers to distinct html files or pages that were requested. Suppose you get 200 unique visitors per day, and there are about 2000 page views per day, then you can infer that your average visitor is viewing 10 pages of your site.
Another indication of overall activity is the amount of bandwidth used, or to put it another way, the total of the amount of data that has been transferred per day. This will vary according to how many visitors you have, how many files they view, and of course the type of site you have. If your site is heavy with graphics, or if there are e-books and mp3s to download then the data transfer on your site will be higher than on a site with plain text. This is an important statistic to look at if you have bandwidth restrictions. If you are not worried about this, it is also a good figure to look at just to see the overall activity of the site.
After you have seen the overall activity, it is good to look at the specifics and find more about how your visitors are using your site and how they got to your site.
One of the things I am most interested to see is what are the most accessed pages, and least accessed pages on the site. There are many ways to use this particular piece of information. For example, hopefully your order page will show up in the top ten. If no one is making it to your order page then maybe that is the reason why you are not making any money from the site. Or by looking at this list you may find some pages that are unexpectedly popular, and then you can add more content of the same type.
Related to the popularity of pages is the "click path" through the site. You can see the order in which people visit the various pages of the site and this information may help you to set up your site in a better way. Related to this are the "entry" and "exit" pages. Where do people enter your website? You will be surprised to learn that many people do not enter through your main page. Your inner pages may be attracting much of your traffic, and by learning which pages are popular entry points, you can set up other pages, optimize them and use them to attract more visitors. People have to leave your site sometimes, but it is important to know where the exit points are, and the "exit pages" stat will show you where these pages are.
How did the visitors get to your site in the first place? The referrers list will tell you this information. A referrer is a web site where a visitor was just prior to reaching your site. You can see, first of all, that if you have 100 unique visitors in a day, and if 50 of them were referred, this means that 50 of them probably typed in your URL directly or clicked on an e-mail link or used a bookmark, while 50 of them came from search engines or links on other web sites. Here you will find out which search engines are sending you traffic. You will find out which of your links on other sites are performing well. By carefully looking at your referrers you can go to work on improving your overall promotion strategy.
Another interesting piece of information related to the referrers are the search terms that were used in the various searches. This statistic gives you an idea of what people are looking for when they visit your site. This information can give you an idea of whether you are getting the right kind of audience for your particular product or service.
Finally there is also technical information about your visitors. What type of browser are they using, what operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) are they using? What screen resolution do they use? You have to make sure that your site can display well to fit the needs of the majority of your visitors.
This information can be obtained using many of the log analysis programs, and also some of the trackers which you can put on your site (for example http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com) give some of this information. But remember that trackers often only give you the information about one page (where the tracker has been pasted in) If you want to get the total picture, the best way is to analyze the logs. By gathering and understanding this information and making changes to your site based on it, you may be able to increase the profitability and success of your web site.
The term hit refers to a request for a file on your web site. When someone visits your web page, they request your URL, but in order to see the page, they also have to get all the graphic files that are located on your page. So, one visitor to your page may be requesting 25 different files, and thus you have 25 hits.
The counters of the Internets early days only measured whether someone requested a particular page where the counter was located. They did not give any indication of what the visitor activity was like on the other pages of the site. Those counters often did not differentiate between a "unique visitor" and total visitors. The number of unique visitors is the number of different people (as measured by their computer's distinct IP number) as opposed to total visitors, which could even be only one person visiting the page many times. (I used to visit my first site a few times a day to see how I was doing!)
So what then is the professional and up-to-date way of gathering statistics and what are the statistics that really count?
Web servers keep logs of all visitor activity. When someone visits your site, he or she requests the various files on the site. The log records all of these requests and records other vital information as well including: the referrer page (or the last page where the surfer was prior to entering your site), what operating system the surfer is using, what screen resolution he or she is using, what search terms he or she made to request your site and a lot of other vital data that could be crucial to your ability to have Internet success or failure.
If you would look a the raw logs of your site you will see a long text file with the date of each entry and would see a few interesting items but you would not be able to put them together very well due to the volume of information. (a line of text for each file requested). There are log analysis programs that do this work for you. One way of using them is to download the log file from your server. Your host should be able to tell you where the file is located, and you can retrieve it using an FTP program. The log file is then fed into the analysis program and the results are generated. There are many programs that do this work. I got started with a simple program (open web scope-and there is free version available). Alternatively, your host may have an analysis program preinstalled on the server, and the results may be able to be seen online (some hosts have the Webalizer program installed for their client's use)
So what are the things to look for when analyzing the logs?
You should look for the number of unique visitors per day. This will give you an idea of how many people are viewing your site and will give you a broad overview of how you are doing.
Another indication of overall activity on the site is the number of "page views" per day.. Unlike hits, page-views refers to distinct html files or pages that were requested. Suppose you get 200 unique visitors per day, and there are about 2000 page views per day, then you can infer that your average visitor is viewing 10 pages of your site.
Another indication of overall activity is the amount of bandwidth used, or to put it another way, the total of the amount of data that has been transferred per day. This will vary according to how many visitors you have, how many files they view, and of course the type of site you have. If your site is heavy with graphics, or if there are e-books and mp3s to download then the data transfer on your site will be higher than on a site with plain text. This is an important statistic to look at if you have bandwidth restrictions. If you are not worried about this, it is also a good figure to look at just to see the overall activity of the site.
After you have seen the overall activity, it is good to look at the specifics and find more about how your visitors are using your site and how they got to your site.
One of the things I am most interested to see is what are the most accessed pages, and least accessed pages on the site. There are many ways to use this particular piece of information. For example, hopefully your order page will show up in the top ten. If no one is making it to your order page then maybe that is the reason why you are not making any money from the site. Or by looking at this list you may find some pages that are unexpectedly popular, and then you can add more content of the same type.
Related to the popularity of pages is the "click path" through the site. You can see the order in which people visit the various pages of the site and this information may help you to set up your site in a better way. Related to this are the "entry" and "exit" pages. Where do people enter your website? You will be surprised to learn that many people do not enter through your main page. Your inner pages may be attracting much of your traffic, and by learning which pages are popular entry points, you can set up other pages, optimize them and use them to attract more visitors. People have to leave your site sometimes, but it is important to know where the exit points are, and the "exit pages" stat will show you where these pages are.
How did the visitors get to your site in the first place? The referrers list will tell you this information. A referrer is a web site where a visitor was just prior to reaching your site. You can see, first of all, that if you have 100 unique visitors in a day, and if 50 of them were referred, this means that 50 of them probably typed in your URL directly or clicked on an e-mail link or used a bookmark, while 50 of them came from search engines or links on other web sites. Here you will find out which search engines are sending you traffic. You will find out which of your links on other sites are performing well. By carefully looking at your referrers you can go to work on improving your overall promotion strategy.
Another interesting piece of information related to the referrers are the search terms that were used in the various searches. This statistic gives you an idea of what people are looking for when they visit your site. This information can give you an idea of whether you are getting the right kind of audience for your particular product or service.
Finally there is also technical information about your visitors. What type of browser are they using, what operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) are they using? What screen resolution do they use? You have to make sure that your site can display well to fit the needs of the majority of your visitors.
This information can be obtained using many of the log analysis programs, and also some of the trackers which you can put on your site (for example http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com) give some of this information. But remember that trackers often only give you the information about one page (where the tracker has been pasted in) If you want to get the total picture, the best way is to analyze the logs. By gathering and understanding this information and making changes to your site based on it, you may be able to increase the profitability and success of your web site.
increased website traffic
Everyone wants to have a lot of traffic to their website. In order to get this traffic many people try to work on their meta tags or even do tricks trying to get more visitors to their website. One of the simplest and most solid ways to increase the flow of traffic to your website is to offer more content. It has often been said that on the Internet, content is king. It is important to understand how more content can bring more visitors to your site and how to generate content that is related to your particular web site.
Why do you need more content?
Many websites are actually company brochures that have been adapted to the web. They merely describe a bit about the company or service and then add some contact information. Such websites usually have about 5-10 separate html files. If these pages have a good amount of text it is possible to optimize them for several keywords and web surfers may find the site.
However, if these sites are in highly competitive fields then it may be difficult to build a decent amount of traffic because search engines try to find the most important web sites that can answer a search query. Search engine robots look for keywords in the meta tags and in the text on the pages to determine what the site is all about. However the search engines also look at the links on the various pages. If your main page is about bicycles, for example, and you have links to other pages on your site relating to the same theme, perhaps, racing bicycles, mountain bicycles etc. then the search engine will conclude that the site is about bicycles, and if you have a lot of pages on this theme, your site should rank higher than someone with a company brochure site of a few pages.
In addition, as I have pointed out in a previous article each page, with its content on your particular theme, stands out alone as a mini website in itself and may come up in searches on the Internet. Thus people will often enter your site through the “side” or “back doors” and not the main page. The more pages you have the more chances of being found in searches, and the more different keywords you can optimize your site for.
So, by building a content rich site on a particular theme, you will boost the chances of your main page to come up in searches and you will increase the likelihood of overall traffic through your other pages coming up in good positions in Internet keyword searches. In addition to this, the more content you have the more respect your page gets from human-edited directories (such as dmoz -Open Directory Project), and other webmasters. If you have quality content then you swill get more link requests, requests for permission to reprint your articles in ezines, more links to specific pages on your site. All of this will result in more traffic.
How to build more content?
Depending on the type of products or services you are offering, there are several ways to build quality content for your site. Here are a few examples
Product Reviews- If you are selling other peoples products, through an affiliate system, rather than just listing a link to the product, you can write a full review of the product, explaining how the product helped you and what are its strengths and weaknesses. This kind of content actually pre-sells the product, as well as being interesting reading in itself. If you have your own products you could give background information on it or get satisfied customers or users to write the reviews.
Background information- Every product or service exists in some kind of context. Suppose you have a hotel in a particular city. Instead of only listing information about your hotel, you could give some pages about the history of the city where the hotel is located or information about popular tourist attractions in that area. The possibilities are enormous.
Questions and Answers. Let your web visitors help you in the process of content creation. Start a questions and answers section on your website or in your electronic newsletter. Not only will you get insight into what your clientele is thinking, but by answering these questions you will generate useful content for your site and for your newsletters.
Bulletin Board Forums- Your web visitors can also directly write the content on your site through a bulletin board. Some bulletin boards are searchable by search engine robots, while others are not. If you have good content on the bulletin board you can also re-publish it on the main sections of your website to insure inclusion in the search engines.
Articles by others- There is no need to recreate the wheel or spend a lot of time writing, if that is not your cup of tea! You can also publish the articles of other people. There is a lot of quality content that is available free of charge. While you usually have to provide a link back to the author of the article, this is a small price to pay considering that some of these articles may pull in tons of traffic.
Finally, if you are wondering how to arrange the increased content you have two main options. Some people actually build a second content-rich website to draw traffic and then direct visitors to their sales site. Another possibility is to add an articles section to your existing site, or simply to link the new pages to the particular product and service pages that are appropriate. Whichever option you choose, you can expect to see an increased flow of traffic as a result of the quality content that you have added to your website.
Why do you need more content?
Many websites are actually company brochures that have been adapted to the web. They merely describe a bit about the company or service and then add some contact information. Such websites usually have about 5-10 separate html files. If these pages have a good amount of text it is possible to optimize them for several keywords and web surfers may find the site.
However, if these sites are in highly competitive fields then it may be difficult to build a decent amount of traffic because search engines try to find the most important web sites that can answer a search query. Search engine robots look for keywords in the meta tags and in the text on the pages to determine what the site is all about. However the search engines also look at the links on the various pages. If your main page is about bicycles, for example, and you have links to other pages on your site relating to the same theme, perhaps, racing bicycles, mountain bicycles etc. then the search engine will conclude that the site is about bicycles, and if you have a lot of pages on this theme, your site should rank higher than someone with a company brochure site of a few pages.
In addition, as I have pointed out in a previous article each page, with its content on your particular theme, stands out alone as a mini website in itself and may come up in searches on the Internet. Thus people will often enter your site through the “side” or “back doors” and not the main page. The more pages you have the more chances of being found in searches, and the more different keywords you can optimize your site for.
So, by building a content rich site on a particular theme, you will boost the chances of your main page to come up in searches and you will increase the likelihood of overall traffic through your other pages coming up in good positions in Internet keyword searches. In addition to this, the more content you have the more respect your page gets from human-edited directories (such as dmoz -Open Directory Project), and other webmasters. If you have quality content then you swill get more link requests, requests for permission to reprint your articles in ezines, more links to specific pages on your site. All of this will result in more traffic.
How to build more content?
Depending on the type of products or services you are offering, there are several ways to build quality content for your site. Here are a few examples
Product Reviews- If you are selling other peoples products, through an affiliate system, rather than just listing a link to the product, you can write a full review of the product, explaining how the product helped you and what are its strengths and weaknesses. This kind of content actually pre-sells the product, as well as being interesting reading in itself. If you have your own products you could give background information on it or get satisfied customers or users to write the reviews.
Background information- Every product or service exists in some kind of context. Suppose you have a hotel in a particular city. Instead of only listing information about your hotel, you could give some pages about the history of the city where the hotel is located or information about popular tourist attractions in that area. The possibilities are enormous.
Questions and Answers. Let your web visitors help you in the process of content creation. Start a questions and answers section on your website or in your electronic newsletter. Not only will you get insight into what your clientele is thinking, but by answering these questions you will generate useful content for your site and for your newsletters.
Bulletin Board Forums- Your web visitors can also directly write the content on your site through a bulletin board. Some bulletin boards are searchable by search engine robots, while others are not. If you have good content on the bulletin board you can also re-publish it on the main sections of your website to insure inclusion in the search engines.
Articles by others- There is no need to recreate the wheel or spend a lot of time writing, if that is not your cup of tea! You can also publish the articles of other people. There is a lot of quality content that is available free of charge. While you usually have to provide a link back to the author of the article, this is a small price to pay considering that some of these articles may pull in tons of traffic.
Finally, if you are wondering how to arrange the increased content you have two main options. Some people actually build a second content-rich website to draw traffic and then direct visitors to their sales site. Another possibility is to add an articles section to your existing site, or simply to link the new pages to the particular product and service pages that are appropriate. Whichever option you choose, you can expect to see an increased flow of traffic as a result of the quality content that you have added to your website.
Existing Website
If 100 people came to your website and one person ordered something, does that
mean that other 99 surfers were not interested in your products or services? Probably not. Every day there are lots of good prospects passing through your website and one of your most important jobs is to engage these people in some
way so that you can bring your message to them again and again. One of the best ways to do that is through a monthly newsletter, like this one!
It is not so difficult to publish a monthly newsletter, it does not require skills that are beyond most individuals or businesses, and most importantly, the time and small expenses involved in managing a newsletter will be more than paid for by
additional orders for your products and services and in maintaining better relations with your existing customers. If you don�t already have a newsletter, follow the steps below and create one.
1. Collect the subscribers Here's where you give people a chance to �vote� for your site. Put a form on your site allowing people to subscribe. You can use any of the free services that have online mailing list maintenance, and which provide you with a piece of html to paste onto your page creating the form, such as is available from www.bravenet.com or you can use a paid service such as the one provided by www.topica.com . Alternatively you can install a mailing list management program on your own server. You could start with a free script such as
�nomodomo� available from www.bignosebird.com or you can purchase
more sophisticated scripts.
2. Write a monthly article about your field If you already have a web site then you must be something of an expert on the area covered by your site. Share your knowledge with your web visitors. You don't have to compose a great literary piece, the simpler it is, the better it is. One of the advantages of this monthly article is that you will produce copy which can be posted on your website, and this copy can help to attract traffic to your website. If you are not used to writing newsletter articles or web copy, read my article http://www.a1-optimization.com/article-writing-tips.htm for some easy-to-follow guidelines.
3. Give updates on your existing products and services: in addition to a main article, a shorter section giving news about your products is very easy to add. Do you have new options, changes in price or special offers. Here is your chance to let
your existing clients and new prospects know about them.
4. Introduce a new product line. Your own newsletter, sent to people who are interested in your products, should be one of the first places that your new product is announced. Later you can do other publicity, but first take care of this obvious announcement in your own newsletter
5. Give any additional news relating to your product or service area For example this newsletter is about search engine optimization and web promotion, and each month I try to give news about what is going on in the world of search engines. You can do the same for your field of activity.
6. Include a guest article This is optional. There is no sense in recreating the wheel. If you see that someone else has really done a great job in expressing things that are good for you and your readers, you can include it in your newsletter. There are tons of free articles available on all subjects available at websites such as www.articlecity.com and your only obligation in using them is to provide the author�s contact information
7. Develop a standard format to your newsletter, and stick to it.
Most newspapers and magazines have a certain format: for example world news on page one, sports on the last page, editorials in the center, etc. By developing a format for your newsletter, you will save time in building it each month, as well as help your readers to become familiar and comfortable with your publication.
8. Encourage your readers to pass on the newsletter to their friends, or post the articles on their web pages (providing that they keep the link to your website).
9. Send it out. If you would like to format the article to wrap at 65 characters or any other custom size, instead of going all across the page, you can find a free online formatting service at http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com/
If you follow the steps above, you will build a tool that will help you to create more interest in your products or services, thus bringing you one step closer to achieving the goals you have set for your Internet activities.
way so that you can bring your message to them again and again. One of the best ways to do that is through a monthly newsletter, like this one!
It is not so difficult to publish a monthly newsletter, it does not require skills that are beyond most individuals or businesses, and most importantly, the time and small expenses involved in managing a newsletter will be more than paid for by
additional orders for your products and services and in maintaining better relations with your existing customers. If you don�t already have a newsletter, follow the steps below and create one.
1. Collect the subscribers Here's where you give people a chance to �vote� for your site. Put a form on your site allowing people to subscribe. You can use any of the free services that have online mailing list maintenance, and which provide you with a piece of html to paste onto your page creating the form, such as is available from www.bravenet.com or you can use a paid service such as the one provided by www.topica.com . Alternatively you can install a mailing list management program on your own server. You could start with a free script such as
�nomodomo� available from www.bignosebird.com or you can purchase
more sophisticated scripts.
2. Write a monthly article about your field If you already have a web site then you must be something of an expert on the area covered by your site. Share your knowledge with your web visitors. You don't have to compose a great literary piece, the simpler it is, the better it is. One of the advantages of this monthly article is that you will produce copy which can be posted on your website, and this copy can help to attract traffic to your website. If you are not used to writing newsletter articles or web copy, read my article http://www.a1-optimization.com/article-writing-tips.htm for some easy-to-follow guidelines.
3. Give updates on your existing products and services: in addition to a main article, a shorter section giving news about your products is very easy to add. Do you have new options, changes in price or special offers. Here is your chance to let
your existing clients and new prospects know about them.
4. Introduce a new product line. Your own newsletter, sent to people who are interested in your products, should be one of the first places that your new product is announced. Later you can do other publicity, but first take care of this obvious announcement in your own newsletter
5. Give any additional news relating to your product or service area For example this newsletter is about search engine optimization and web promotion, and each month I try to give news about what is going on in the world of search engines. You can do the same for your field of activity.
6. Include a guest article This is optional. There is no sense in recreating the wheel. If you see that someone else has really done a great job in expressing things that are good for you and your readers, you can include it in your newsletter. There are tons of free articles available on all subjects available at websites such as www.articlecity.com and your only obligation in using them is to provide the author�s contact information
7. Develop a standard format to your newsletter, and stick to it.
Most newspapers and magazines have a certain format: for example world news on page one, sports on the last page, editorials in the center, etc. By developing a format for your newsletter, you will save time in building it each month, as well as help your readers to become familiar and comfortable with your publication.
8. Encourage your readers to pass on the newsletter to their friends, or post the articles on their web pages (providing that they keep the link to your website).
9. Send it out. If you would like to format the article to wrap at 65 characters or any other custom size, instead of going all across the page, you can find a free online formatting service at http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com/
If you follow the steps above, you will build a tool that will help you to create more interest in your products or services, thus bringing you one step closer to achieving the goals you have set for your Internet activities.
important as Quantity
Link popularity, the number of incoming links to your website, plays an important part in determining your site’s ranking in a search engine. But, before you rush off to try and get any and all sites to link to you there are a few things to consider, and one of them is that the quality of the links are as important as the quantity.
If you get a link to your site from Yahoo, then your own site’s ranking in various search engines will be enhanced, as Yahoo is one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Ranking of course is not a precise term, and varies from search engine to search engine. But if you want to be consistent, you can use the Google Toolbar, and the Google page ranking, shown in the toolbar, as way of judging how well you are doing. Google ranks a page from 0-10, and a site with a 0 ranking will not do well in searches, especially in very competitive categories. So when it comes to finding link partners one guideline is to find sites that have a Google ranking that is equal to or higher than yours.
A site with a 0 ranking will not help you. Also, sometimes a site has a relatively good page ranking but its links page is 0, and this is the page that links to you, thus it is very important. So the question is why is the links page 0 when the rest of the site is OK? Some sites use robotic tools to create what are known as “link farms. Link farms are huge collections of links, a giant directory that dwarfs the original web site. These were set up by people hoping to increase their link popularity very fast. However search engines got wise to this, and do not give any importance to such directories, hence you will see a 0 ranking for them.
So, if it is a link farm, don’t participate in a link exchange with that site. It will not help you, and some observers say that a link from a “link farm” will actually harm your standing. I am not sure if it will harm you, but it is definitely not going to help you.
Another important thing to consider is whether the links page or directory on the other site is visible to the public. This might seem elementary, but some people like to get reciprocal links but don’t really display them fairly, because they don’t want people leaving their site through the reciprocal links. The links page should be linked to at least one of the major pages of the site, if it is not, then don’t puruse the link. One time, I noticed this on another site and objected. The webmaster acknowledged my point and changed the site to properly display the links page.
Similarly, if your link on the other site will be in sea of hundreds of unsorted links, like on the free-for-all links pages, this is not valuable to you, because such a site has little chance of sending you any traffic.
What are the best sites to link to? A site that has good content, a site that your web visitors will think is a valuable resource. While you can’t take responsibility for everything that is on the other person’s website, you shouldn’t knowingly send your web visitors to a low-quality website. So be selective in pursuing reciprocal links, and in responding to requests for links. Visit the other site and see what it is all about before jumping to link with them.
The ideal link partner should be a site thematically related to yours, with the kind of visitors who will also be interested in your site. It should give your link the kind of prominence that will enable you to get some traffic, and finally, the site should have a decent page ranking. If you get all of these factors together, you can be sure that it is a quality link and worth your effort in making the contact and setting up the link exchange. Check your logs from time to time and see which links are performing well, and then try to find similar link partners.
Reciprocal linking takes time if you want to do it correctly, but the targeted traffic that it can generate coupled with the enhancement of your page ranking that it can provide, makes it an important part of overall website promotion.
If you get a link to your site from Yahoo, then your own site’s ranking in various search engines will be enhanced, as Yahoo is one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Ranking of course is not a precise term, and varies from search engine to search engine. But if you want to be consistent, you can use the Google Toolbar, and the Google page ranking, shown in the toolbar, as way of judging how well you are doing. Google ranks a page from 0-10, and a site with a 0 ranking will not do well in searches, especially in very competitive categories. So when it comes to finding link partners one guideline is to find sites that have a Google ranking that is equal to or higher than yours.
A site with a 0 ranking will not help you. Also, sometimes a site has a relatively good page ranking but its links page is 0, and this is the page that links to you, thus it is very important. So the question is why is the links page 0 when the rest of the site is OK? Some sites use robotic tools to create what are known as “link farms. Link farms are huge collections of links, a giant directory that dwarfs the original web site. These were set up by people hoping to increase their link popularity very fast. However search engines got wise to this, and do not give any importance to such directories, hence you will see a 0 ranking for them.
So, if it is a link farm, don’t participate in a link exchange with that site. It will not help you, and some observers say that a link from a “link farm” will actually harm your standing. I am not sure if it will harm you, but it is definitely not going to help you.
Another important thing to consider is whether the links page or directory on the other site is visible to the public. This might seem elementary, but some people like to get reciprocal links but don’t really display them fairly, because they don’t want people leaving their site through the reciprocal links. The links page should be linked to at least one of the major pages of the site, if it is not, then don’t puruse the link. One time, I noticed this on another site and objected. The webmaster acknowledged my point and changed the site to properly display the links page.
Similarly, if your link on the other site will be in sea of hundreds of unsorted links, like on the free-for-all links pages, this is not valuable to you, because such a site has little chance of sending you any traffic.
What are the best sites to link to? A site that has good content, a site that your web visitors will think is a valuable resource. While you can’t take responsibility for everything that is on the other person’s website, you shouldn’t knowingly send your web visitors to a low-quality website. So be selective in pursuing reciprocal links, and in responding to requests for links. Visit the other site and see what it is all about before jumping to link with them.
The ideal link partner should be a site thematically related to yours, with the kind of visitors who will also be interested in your site. It should give your link the kind of prominence that will enable you to get some traffic, and finally, the site should have a decent page ranking. If you get all of these factors together, you can be sure that it is a quality link and worth your effort in making the contact and setting up the link exchange. Check your logs from time to time and see which links are performing well, and then try to find similar link partners.
Reciprocal linking takes time if you want to do it correctly, but the targeted traffic that it can generate coupled with the enhancement of your page ranking that it can provide, makes it an important part of overall website promotion.
Start Your New Website
You’ve just got a new website and it looks beautiful, but unless you take some active steps to promote it, it will just sit there like a new car without any gas and empty tires.
If you are not sure where to begin, here are seven steps that are free or inexpensive. All of them will help you to get your new website rolling.
1. Tell Your Friends – Often we are thinking about reaching the unknown millions of people out there surfing the Internet, but we are forgetting the hundreds of people who we already know. Look at your e-mail address book and get the word out, tell your business contacts, friends, relatives and tel them to tell their friends too. Send an e-mail to all the people who made inquiries or bought products or services from you in the last year.
2. Link to Your Own Site – Once again we are often thinking about getting some unknown people to make a link to our websites and we are forgetting possibilities that are nearby. If you already have one website, make sure that this site is linking to your new site. A website without any incoming links to it will have a very low page ranking in the all-important Google search engine and will face an uphill battle to be seen in Google search results, especially if you are in a very competitive category.
Even when your site is in the construction stage you, or even your web designer can link to the new site from another already well-established site, mentioning that the new site is under construction. If you already have several sites, then link them to your infant site. It will help the new site to be seen in competitive search engine listings even in its debut period.
3. Get a paid inclusion in one of the big search engines. It takes 4-6 weeks to get listed in Google, and other search engines are equally slow. However there are a few fairly important search engines that have inexpensive express inclusion programs. If you join these programs, then your site will be listed in 48 hours. Inktomi, which provides results for MSN and 100 other search services, has an inclusion program which costs $39 for the first URL that you submit, and subsequent ones cost $25. The value of the Inktomi submission is that they revisit your URL every 48 hours and if you make changes on the page you can see the results in the MSN listings very quickly. Thus, you can tweak your pages and see how it affects your position.
Similarly there are paid inclusion systems for Teoma (which feeds the popular Ask Jeeves Search Engine), Alta Vista, and Lycos.
4.Add your site to the Open Web Directory and the major search engines. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to search engine submission. Forget about the sales hype that tells you to add your URL to 300, 000 search engines. Only a few search engines and directories provide the lion’s share of Internet traffic. If your site is in good shape, no longer under construction, then go to www.dmoz.org. This is the Open Web Directory. Find the category where your site fits, and make a submission. If you are accepted here your site will appear in the many search engines and local directories that use the results from the Open Web Directory. Inclusion in this directory usually takes time but it will help you a lot. Similarly submit your site to Google, Alta Vista and All The Web, these are the remaining giants where you can submit for free.
5. Start a reciprocal links campaign – Once you have given yourself a link from your other sites or from your designer’s page, you can go out and ask other complementary sites for links. As I mentioned, these incoming links will help your page rank in searches but they will also generate traffic. If you can find specialized sites or directories dealing with your particular product or service, then a link on one of these sites can provide a large amount of targeted traffic.
6.Write an article about your product or service – If you have a website the chances are that you are an expert in the field that your site is all about. Write an article about your product or service, or write an article related to the subject matter of your site. Submit the article online to various websites and e-mail lists dealing with your topic. The publication of your article in a big e-zine, or on a popular web site can get your new site off to a roaring start.
7. Promote Your Site Off-line – Now that you have a site, put the URL on your stationary, on your cars and trucks, in your brochures, business cards, your newspaper and TV advertising, and circulars. You can also put it on hats, t-shirts, mugs and other items. The cafepress.com has a program enabling you to put your URL on these items and even sell them online.
If you follow all or some of these steps your new site will definitely receive visitors and within a short period can become an important asset to you.
If you are not sure where to begin, here are seven steps that are free or inexpensive. All of them will help you to get your new website rolling.
1. Tell Your Friends – Often we are thinking about reaching the unknown millions of people out there surfing the Internet, but we are forgetting the hundreds of people who we already know. Look at your e-mail address book and get the word out, tell your business contacts, friends, relatives and tel them to tell their friends too. Send an e-mail to all the people who made inquiries or bought products or services from you in the last year.
2. Link to Your Own Site – Once again we are often thinking about getting some unknown people to make a link to our websites and we are forgetting possibilities that are nearby. If you already have one website, make sure that this site is linking to your new site. A website without any incoming links to it will have a very low page ranking in the all-important Google search engine and will face an uphill battle to be seen in Google search results, especially if you are in a very competitive category.
Even when your site is in the construction stage you, or even your web designer can link to the new site from another already well-established site, mentioning that the new site is under construction. If you already have several sites, then link them to your infant site. It will help the new site to be seen in competitive search engine listings even in its debut period.
3. Get a paid inclusion in one of the big search engines. It takes 4-6 weeks to get listed in Google, and other search engines are equally slow. However there are a few fairly important search engines that have inexpensive express inclusion programs. If you join these programs, then your site will be listed in 48 hours. Inktomi, which provides results for MSN and 100 other search services, has an inclusion program which costs $39 for the first URL that you submit, and subsequent ones cost $25. The value of the Inktomi submission is that they revisit your URL every 48 hours and if you make changes on the page you can see the results in the MSN listings very quickly. Thus, you can tweak your pages and see how it affects your position.
Similarly there are paid inclusion systems for Teoma (which feeds the popular Ask Jeeves Search Engine), Alta Vista, and Lycos.
4.Add your site to the Open Web Directory and the major search engines. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to search engine submission. Forget about the sales hype that tells you to add your URL to 300, 000 search engines. Only a few search engines and directories provide the lion’s share of Internet traffic. If your site is in good shape, no longer under construction, then go to www.dmoz.org. This is the Open Web Directory. Find the category where your site fits, and make a submission. If you are accepted here your site will appear in the many search engines and local directories that use the results from the Open Web Directory. Inclusion in this directory usually takes time but it will help you a lot. Similarly submit your site to Google, Alta Vista and All The Web, these are the remaining giants where you can submit for free.
5. Start a reciprocal links campaign – Once you have given yourself a link from your other sites or from your designer’s page, you can go out and ask other complementary sites for links. As I mentioned, these incoming links will help your page rank in searches but they will also generate traffic. If you can find specialized sites or directories dealing with your particular product or service, then a link on one of these sites can provide a large amount of targeted traffic.
6.Write an article about your product or service – If you have a website the chances are that you are an expert in the field that your site is all about. Write an article about your product or service, or write an article related to the subject matter of your site. Submit the article online to various websites and e-mail lists dealing with your topic. The publication of your article in a big e-zine, or on a popular web site can get your new site off to a roaring start.
7. Promote Your Site Off-line – Now that you have a site, put the URL on your stationary, on your cars and trucks, in your brochures, business cards, your newspaper and TV advertising, and circulars. You can also put it on hats, t-shirts, mugs and other items. The cafepress.com has a program enabling you to put your URL on these items and even sell them online.
If you follow all or some of these steps your new site will definitely receive visitors and within a short period can become an important asset to you.
Effective Internet
On the Internet “content is king”, and the real guts of content is the written word. If you are managing a website you need readable text for your onsite articles, for articles in your promotional newsletter or ezine and for promotional articles to be published on other sites or in other ezines. While these writing tasks can be outsourced to professionals, it is also possible for you to do it yourself if you follow a step-by-step process that is outlined in the following ten tips.
1. In the first paragraph clearly state what the article is about. In standard journalism you would tell who, what, why, when and where an event is happening. In web articles you oftentimes state a problem, such as “how to get good written materials for your website”, and then explain how the article is going to solve the problem “by showing a simple step-by-step approach to writing”.
2. Organize your material in a point-wise fashion. Before you begin writing think of the points that your article is going to cover. You may not necessarily show the points, as I am doing in this article (calling them ten tips), however, for your own outline of the article you should know what you are going to say before you begin writing. Write down these points and then make sure you include them as you begin the writing process.
3. Put the reader at ease. You are not writing for a scientific or literary society, but to your peers on the Internet. Write in a simple style and if you introduce new terms, define them for your readers.
4. Explain your points in short paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to look at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are usually enough for one paragraph.
5. Don’t be afraid to spill all the beans! Tell your trade secrets! No, I am not crazy, the more you tell, the more the demand you will create for your goods and services. I once hesitated to write an article on “Tips for Writing Meta Tags” (http://www.a1-optimization.com/optimization-tips-2.htm) thinking, who will need my search engine optimization services if they read the article? I was wrong, the article was widely published and generated several orders for my services. If you give more information, people will understand that you really are an authority on the subject that you are speaking about.
6. Give concrete examples and personal experiences to back up your points. Tell how you faced a problem and how you solved it. Or give hypothetical examples of the California Widget Company and how its website would, for example need a title tag of “Widgets: electronic widgets from the California Widget Company”
7. Emphasize the benefits of your product or service. When it comes to selling, it is the benefits that sell, rather than the features. Sure, you are selling garden supplies, home décor, clothing, gifts and jewelry on your website. These are features. But the benefits are that people can get these items in one place without shopping around, that they can save time and money, etc. The gurus of Internet marketing, such as Ken Evoy (http://myws.sitesell.com/webpromote2.html) all say that you should constantly mention the benefits that you offer to your potential customer.
8. Give resource information to your readers. Give the addresses of websites where your readers can get more information on the subject that you are talking about. These may be your own websites or they can be other resources. In case you are worrying about losing customers, good outgoing links from your website are also helpful to your site’s page ranking and positioning in search engines.
9. Get another opinion on your article. Show it to your friends and colleagues, and don’t worry if they criticize you, it is better that your friends find the mistakes than your clientele. Always remember, a good editor is a writer’s best friend
10. Keep your most important information near the beginning of the article and summarize what you want to say at the end. Editors usually cut things near the end, so keep your most important points and ideas in the beginning of the article. At the very end of the article you can summarize what you set out to accomplish in your opening paragraph.
You may not win a literary prize, but if you follow the steps that I have outlined above you will be able to produce effective written content for your website and for your promotional outreach via your own newsletters and through articles published on other websites. These articles could become the key to success in your Internet endeavors.
1. In the first paragraph clearly state what the article is about. In standard journalism you would tell who, what, why, when and where an event is happening. In web articles you oftentimes state a problem, such as “how to get good written materials for your website”, and then explain how the article is going to solve the problem “by showing a simple step-by-step approach to writing”.
2. Organize your material in a point-wise fashion. Before you begin writing think of the points that your article is going to cover. You may not necessarily show the points, as I am doing in this article (calling them ten tips), however, for your own outline of the article you should know what you are going to say before you begin writing. Write down these points and then make sure you include them as you begin the writing process.
3. Put the reader at ease. You are not writing for a scientific or literary society, but to your peers on the Internet. Write in a simple style and if you introduce new terms, define them for your readers.
4. Explain your points in short paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to look at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are usually enough for one paragraph.
5. Don’t be afraid to spill all the beans! Tell your trade secrets! No, I am not crazy, the more you tell, the more the demand you will create for your goods and services. I once hesitated to write an article on “Tips for Writing Meta Tags” (http://www.a1-optimization.com/optimization-tips-2.htm) thinking, who will need my search engine optimization services if they read the article? I was wrong, the article was widely published and generated several orders for my services. If you give more information, people will understand that you really are an authority on the subject that you are speaking about.
6. Give concrete examples and personal experiences to back up your points. Tell how you faced a problem and how you solved it. Or give hypothetical examples of the California Widget Company and how its website would, for example need a title tag of “Widgets: electronic widgets from the California Widget Company”
7. Emphasize the benefits of your product or service. When it comes to selling, it is the benefits that sell, rather than the features. Sure, you are selling garden supplies, home décor, clothing, gifts and jewelry on your website. These are features. But the benefits are that people can get these items in one place without shopping around, that they can save time and money, etc. The gurus of Internet marketing, such as Ken Evoy (http://myws.sitesell.com/webpromote2.html) all say that you should constantly mention the benefits that you offer to your potential customer.
8. Give resource information to your readers. Give the addresses of websites where your readers can get more information on the subject that you are talking about. These may be your own websites or they can be other resources. In case you are worrying about losing customers, good outgoing links from your website are also helpful to your site’s page ranking and positioning in search engines.
9. Get another opinion on your article. Show it to your friends and colleagues, and don’t worry if they criticize you, it is better that your friends find the mistakes than your clientele. Always remember, a good editor is a writer’s best friend
10. Keep your most important information near the beginning of the article and summarize what you want to say at the end. Editors usually cut things near the end, so keep your most important points and ideas in the beginning of the article. At the very end of the article you can summarize what you set out to accomplish in your opening paragraph.
You may not win a literary prize, but if you follow the steps that I have outlined above you will be able to produce effective written content for your website and for your promotional outreach via your own newsletters and through articles published on other websites. These articles could become the key to success in your Internet endeavors.
little things that count
Building a search engine friendly site can seem like a daunting task, but there are
some parts of search engine optimization process that are quite simple and quickly done. These seemingly simple tasks can make a big difference in the results you get in your efforts to attain top search engine positions. If you are in the process of building a new site take a look at the easily done optimization points explained below, and if you already have a site, you can use this list as a way to check your site
1. Name your files properly. Just as it is important to put keywords in your metatags and in the copy of your site, it is also very helpful to have keywords in the names of the files. If have a website for the Electronic Widgets Company, your “About Us” page could have the file name “aboutus.html” but then you would not have any keywords in it. It would be better to have “electronic-widgets-aboutus.html” or “about-electronic-widgets.html”. If you make a sub-directory also make sure that its name incorporates an important keyword. Never make a file such as “page1.hml” or “page2.html”, you are throwing away an opportunity to place your keyword.
Some people carry this point to the nth degree and choose a long domain name with many keywords put together. I don’t think you need to do this, as these kinds of domain names are difficult to remember. However if you are building a secondary domain, one that is content-rich and designed to get traffic which is then directed to another site, you can opt for a keyword-rich domain name.
2. Put your keywords in hyperlinks. Another important place for keywords is in the hyperlinks which lead to other pages on your website. If you have a navigation bar at the top or the left that is made of gif or jpeg images, you can add a text navigation bar at the bottom of the page and make sure that your keywords are in these text links. So, instead of having a text link that says “resources” it could better be written as “electronic widget resources”. Similarly whenever you find a place within the written text of the page where you can highlight a keyword and link it to another part of the site, take this opportunity. You can even make a hyperlink that jumps to a bookmark on the same page.
3. Make sure you have your own domain name. It is more difficult to promote an interior portion of a site, than the main domain name. It only costs from $8.00-15.00 to get a domain name, and your own webspace can be obtained for as little as $100 per year. So, if you already have a site, but want to start a completely different product line, start a new site with a new domain name rather than set up a subdirectory of an existing site, or , worse, use a free site.
4. Check to see that your are emphasizing the right keywords. While keyword research is a large task, and maybe doesn't qualify as a little thing, it will not take you very long to visit this url (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion ) and see if people are really searching for what you are talking about. Take a look, and modify your web copy to reflect the actual searches that people make for your products.
5. Use the alt tag for images. Here is another opportunity to place your keywords. Search engines cannot “see pictures” or graphic files. Whenever you have a graphic image you have the option of adding alt text. This alt text will be visible when surfers put their mouse over the images, but more importantly it will be visible to search engines. So instead of just having a photo of a widget, you can put a description with your important keywords. If you have a navigation bar with images, you can put descriptive text for each navigation item.
6. Make sure that you have a title tag for each page. This may seem like an obvious point, but have you ever reached a web page which had a title, visible in the blue strip at the top of the browser, that said "new page" or "untitled page"? In this case the person building the site forgot to put in the title tag. These kinds of pages are usually found on the inner pages of a web site, a place where many people, mistakenly, pay less attention. So check all of your pages, make sure that there is a title tag, and make sure that your keywords are in the title tag.
Taking advantage of these search engine optimization opportunities will not take you much time or cost you much money, but your gain in a better position in search engine results will be well worth your effort.
some parts of search engine optimization process that are quite simple and quickly done. These seemingly simple tasks can make a big difference in the results you get in your efforts to attain top search engine positions. If you are in the process of building a new site take a look at the easily done optimization points explained below, and if you already have a site, you can use this list as a way to check your site
1. Name your files properly. Just as it is important to put keywords in your metatags and in the copy of your site, it is also very helpful to have keywords in the names of the files. If have a website for the Electronic Widgets Company, your “About Us” page could have the file name “aboutus.html” but then you would not have any keywords in it. It would be better to have “electronic-widgets-aboutus.html” or “about-electronic-widgets.html”. If you make a sub-directory also make sure that its name incorporates an important keyword. Never make a file such as “page1.hml” or “page2.html”, you are throwing away an opportunity to place your keyword.
Some people carry this point to the nth degree and choose a long domain name with many keywords put together. I don’t think you need to do this, as these kinds of domain names are difficult to remember. However if you are building a secondary domain, one that is content-rich and designed to get traffic which is then directed to another site, you can opt for a keyword-rich domain name.
2. Put your keywords in hyperlinks. Another important place for keywords is in the hyperlinks which lead to other pages on your website. If you have a navigation bar at the top or the left that is made of gif or jpeg images, you can add a text navigation bar at the bottom of the page and make sure that your keywords are in these text links. So, instead of having a text link that says “resources” it could better be written as “electronic widget resources”. Similarly whenever you find a place within the written text of the page where you can highlight a keyword and link it to another part of the site, take this opportunity. You can even make a hyperlink that jumps to a bookmark on the same page.
3. Make sure you have your own domain name. It is more difficult to promote an interior portion of a site, than the main domain name. It only costs from $8.00-15.00 to get a domain name, and your own webspace can be obtained for as little as $100 per year. So, if you already have a site, but want to start a completely different product line, start a new site with a new domain name rather than set up a subdirectory of an existing site, or , worse, use a free site.
4. Check to see that your are emphasizing the right keywords. While keyword research is a large task, and maybe doesn't qualify as a little thing, it will not take you very long to visit this url (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion ) and see if people are really searching for what you are talking about. Take a look, and modify your web copy to reflect the actual searches that people make for your products.
5. Use the alt tag for images. Here is another opportunity to place your keywords. Search engines cannot “see pictures” or graphic files. Whenever you have a graphic image you have the option of adding alt text. This alt text will be visible when surfers put their mouse over the images, but more importantly it will be visible to search engines. So instead of just having a photo of a widget, you can put a description with your important keywords. If you have a navigation bar with images, you can put descriptive text for each navigation item.
6. Make sure that you have a title tag for each page. This may seem like an obvious point, but have you ever reached a web page which had a title, visible in the blue strip at the top of the browser, that said "new page" or "untitled page"? In this case the person building the site forgot to put in the title tag. These kinds of pages are usually found on the inner pages of a web site, a place where many people, mistakenly, pay less attention. So check all of your pages, make sure that there is a title tag, and make sure that your keywords are in the title tag.
Taking advantage of these search engine optimization opportunities will not take you much time or cost you much money, but your gain in a better position in search engine results will be well worth your effort.
Deep Submission
If I ask you how many web sites do you have? You may say “One, yes it is http://searchengineoptimizasion.blogspot.com “ or “two” in case you have a second organization or company. When I first began promoting my web sites I was, like most people, only thinking in terms of one web address, the url of my main page. And I thought that this main page was a difficult one to promote because it was the index page of a magazine that covered a wide variety of fields (environment, arts, science, politics, spirituality, etc). How could I optimize a page for so many keywords, which market could I focus on?
It was only after discussing the subject with another web master, who had a similar site, that I learned that the diversity of all the inner pages of my site was a huge asset. Each of these pages was like a mini-website, and capable of attracting a multitude of visitors using a variety of keywords. Part of my ignorance at that point was due to a lack of accurate tracking data. I had a simple tracker on the main page that told how many visits that page was getting, but I had no idea of what was happening deeper inside the site. Then I was able to get access to the raw access logs of the site and using a log analysis tool I began to see the real picture of what was happening.
I saw that the main page was getting one third of the total traffic of the site. I found out that one article, “The Causes of Tropical Deforestation” was a big hit and consistently getting a lot of traffic. Other articles were also quite popular, but covering completely different subjects. It was then that I realized that I had not one web site, but more than 100 web sites.
What does all this mean in terms of design, optimization and submission? It means that one has to realize that people may well enter your site through the “side door” or the “back door” and you have to prepare accordingly.
For design, it means that the structure of your pages and navigation system should invite the people who enter from the inner pages, to make it to your important pages (about us, main page, or your order page!). For optimization it means that you should take more care about the placing of keywords, description and title tags on all the pages. Have you ever seen websites where the blue line at the top of the browser is showing the title of the page to be “New Page”? Even very good designers become a little bit sloppy on the inner pages, and though they do usually manage to put a proper page title on those pages, they seldom take the trouble to write separate meta tags for the keywords and descriptions. But as I learned, these pages are an asset and can be optimized and promoted to gain more traffic.
The first thing that I did was to redesign my navigation system to take advantage of this traffic and make sure that those who entered through the back door would visit the important departments of the magazine. I also put a newsletter sign-up form on all the inner pages, and to this day these pages are bringing in a steady stream of subscribers to the magazine’s e-mail bulletin. The next thing I did was to make sure that the inner pages had proper meta tags, and finally I did a deep submission of the whole site.
What is a deep submission and why is it necessary? When you submit the main page of your site to a search engine, the search engine sends a “spider” to look at your page and put the data on that page in the search engines index. Sometimes the spider will follow the links on your main page and also pick up some of the inner pages (Google, for example is very good at this) but sometimes they don’t go deep enough into the site and only one or two of your pages are indexed. To get the other pages indexed you have to submit them all separately, just as if they were other web sites. However, if you have 100 pages you can’t submit them on the same day to one search engine. That would be regarded as spamming. If you submit one url per day per search engine you will not get into any problems.
So, think about your site more deeply. Your inner pages are mini-websites and if prepared and promoted properly they could increase your traffic and your sales dramatically.
It was only after discussing the subject with another web master, who had a similar site, that I learned that the diversity of all the inner pages of my site was a huge asset. Each of these pages was like a mini-website, and capable of attracting a multitude of visitors using a variety of keywords. Part of my ignorance at that point was due to a lack of accurate tracking data. I had a simple tracker on the main page that told how many visits that page was getting, but I had no idea of what was happening deeper inside the site. Then I was able to get access to the raw access logs of the site and using a log analysis tool I began to see the real picture of what was happening.
I saw that the main page was getting one third of the total traffic of the site. I found out that one article, “The Causes of Tropical Deforestation” was a big hit and consistently getting a lot of traffic. Other articles were also quite popular, but covering completely different subjects. It was then that I realized that I had not one web site, but more than 100 web sites.
What does all this mean in terms of design, optimization and submission? It means that one has to realize that people may well enter your site through the “side door” or the “back door” and you have to prepare accordingly.
For design, it means that the structure of your pages and navigation system should invite the people who enter from the inner pages, to make it to your important pages (about us, main page, or your order page!). For optimization it means that you should take more care about the placing of keywords, description and title tags on all the pages. Have you ever seen websites where the blue line at the top of the browser is showing the title of the page to be “New Page”? Even very good designers become a little bit sloppy on the inner pages, and though they do usually manage to put a proper page title on those pages, they seldom take the trouble to write separate meta tags for the keywords and descriptions. But as I learned, these pages are an asset and can be optimized and promoted to gain more traffic.
The first thing that I did was to redesign my navigation system to take advantage of this traffic and make sure that those who entered through the back door would visit the important departments of the magazine. I also put a newsletter sign-up form on all the inner pages, and to this day these pages are bringing in a steady stream of subscribers to the magazine’s e-mail bulletin. The next thing I did was to make sure that the inner pages had proper meta tags, and finally I did a deep submission of the whole site.
What is a deep submission and why is it necessary? When you submit the main page of your site to a search engine, the search engine sends a “spider” to look at your page and put the data on that page in the search engines index. Sometimes the spider will follow the links on your main page and also pick up some of the inner pages (Google, for example is very good at this) but sometimes they don’t go deep enough into the site and only one or two of your pages are indexed. To get the other pages indexed you have to submit them all separately, just as if they were other web sites. However, if you have 100 pages you can’t submit them on the same day to one search engine. That would be regarded as spamming. If you submit one url per day per search engine you will not get into any problems.
So, think about your site more deeply. Your inner pages are mini-websites and if prepared and promoted properly they could increase your traffic and your sales dramatically.
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