How to Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is critical to the process of SEO. Without this component, your efforts to rank well in the major search engines may be mis-directed to the wrong terms and phrases, resulting in rankings that no one will ever see. The process of keyword research involves several phases:
Brainstorming - Thinking of what your customers/potential visitors would be likely to type in to search engines in an attempt to find the information/services your site offers (including alternate spellings, wordings, synonyms, etc).
Surveying Customers - Surveying past or potential customers is a great way to expand your keyword list to include as many terms and phrases as possible. It can also give you a good idea of what's likely to be the biggest traffic drivers and produce the highest conversion rates.
Applying Data from KW Research Tools - Several tools online (including Wordtracker & Overture - both described below) offer information about the number of times users perform specific searches. Using these tools can offer concrete data about trends in keyword selection.
Term Selection - The next step is to create a matrix or chart that analyzes the terms you believe are valuable and compares traffic, relevancy, and the likelihood of conversions for each. This will allow you to make the best informed decisions about which terms to target. SEOmoz's KW difficulty tool can also aid in choosing terms that will be achievable for the site.
Performance Testing and Analytics - After keyword selection and implementation of targeting, analytics programs (like Indextools and Clickstracks) that measure web traffic, activity, and conversions can be used to further refine keyword selection.
Source: seomoz.org
Monday, October 1, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Web Site Copy
How to Create Search Engine Friendly Web Site Copy
Search engines read text and not much else. Because they can’t generally index graphics, search engines rely on the text in web sites to provide information about the site content, which they can compare with search queries.
Webmasters therefore need to use body text on any pages on the site that they want indexed by the search engines and ranked highly for matching search queries. Not graphical text that was created in design software, but actual, visible body text. Not sure if your site uses graphical or body text? A good rule of thumb that I learnt from search engine guru Danny Sullivan is to try and highlight the text with your mouse. If you can drag your mouse over individual words in the text when viewing it in a browser, chances are this is body text and the search engines can read it.
The most important page on which to use body text is the home page. Above is an example of a home page that uses graphical text instead of body text. Figure 1 shows what content the site visitors see, while Figure 2 shows the content a search engine sees and indexes.
How much information about a site’s content does a page like the one above provide a search engine? That’s right, very little. With next to no text to be found, the search engine would have to rely on the page’s Title and META Tags to tell it what the page is about. With such little information to go on, it is unlikely that a search engine would consider this page a relevant match for search queries relating to its content. To remedy this, it is widely recommended that each web page you want listed in search engines should contain at least 250 words of visible body text.
Keyword-Rich Text
While it’s a good idea to use plenty of body text on web pages, if that text doesn’t contain relevant keywords and phrases that people type in to the search engines, there’s not much point, because a site isn’t going to be found for logical search queries anyway. Many web sites make the mistake of including text on their site that is either unrelated to their products and services, or full of marketing-speak like “Internet solutions†or “superior servicesâ€. The Internet is plagued with web sites selling particular items without once making reference to those items in their site text. Weird huh?
For a search engine to find a site relevant for a particular search query, it MUST find that search query somewhere in that site. The easiest way to ensure this is to include logical keywords and phrases within the visible text on web pages, as well as in the Title and META tags. The best way for webmasters to find keywords that searchers are actually using is by conducting keyword research of their target market on a site such as Keyword Discovery or WordTracker.
Once it is determined what search terms perspective visitors are commonly typing in to search engines, they can then be compared to the goods and services offered on the site and the body text can be adjusted accordingly. Sites lacking any keyword research tend to use very generic, unfocused body copy, or sales-oriented “hypeâ€. Neither style contributes to high search engine rankings.
Target keywords and search phrases placed strategically throughout your body copy give your pages a much higher ranking potential on search engines for related searches. But it’s not as easy as throwing the keywords into your site text willy-nilly. You must ensure that the keywords are integrated seamlessly so their repetition is unobvious and so that the text flows smoothly for the reader.
Don't compromise the readability of your copy to achieve this - hire an expert copywriter to strike the right balance if need be.
SEO Copywriting
Before writing your web site copy, you should research potential keywords and phrases that your target audience may use in search engines and then narrow the list down to your priority terms for each page, sorted in order of importance. You should then use those target search terms as a basis for the creation of optimized Title and META tags for each page on your site. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to integrate those same target search terms into your visible web page copy. We call this SEO copywriting. But exactly how do we do it?
Speak to Your Audience
Don’t lose site of the reader when writing your body copy. Integrating your keywords is important, but not if you are sacrificing the readability of your site and losing the attention of your audience. Put yourself in their shoes like you did when researching your keywords. What are they looking for? What do they need? How will your product/service help them? Does it represent value for money?
Be emotive when describing your products and services. Describe how your product/service will make them feel or look, how it will improve their lives, give them more time etc. Use trigger words that people respond to such as “freeâ€, “successâ€, “youâ€, “cash†etc. Not sure what these are? Check out Words That Sell reports. These reports are perfect if you are targeting a specific industry or profession because they define what keywords people in over 38 industries respond to and what they expect when making a buying decision.
Not sure who your audience is or what they’re looking for? Why not ask them? Use a free survey service such as Survey Monkey to learn more about them so you can write “to†them and not “at†them. You could even draft various styles of body copy and obtain feedback from your site visitors to determine what copywriting style works better for them.
Use Easy to Understand Language
The Internet is no place for verbosity. People are in a hurry - they want to find what they seek quickly and easily with the least hassle possible. You can help them in this quest by ensuring your site pages use simple language and easy to grasp concepts throughout. For example instead of "brand-building web information architects", use "website designers specializing in brand promotion". Keep the large chunks of text on each page to a minimum, using bullet points, white space, graphics, lists and sub-headings to break it up and make it easier to read. This rule of thumb is especially important when creating landing pages for pay per click and other advertising campaigns.
Use examples to get your main points across or to demonstrate your product benefits. Use the old WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) adage when composing your body copy to keep the user's interests at top of mind. Remember your international visitors by incorporating regional word usage (such as organize versus organize or jewelry versus jewellery) and avoid technical jargon that could alienate. Want your visitor to take a particular action? Spell it out for them in plain English, for example Click here to Buy Now, Subscribe to our free newsletter, Bookmark this page now etc. These references are called “Calls to Actionâ€.
Build Your Copy Around Your Keywords
You should always build your page copy around your keywords and not the other way around. If your existing page copy doesn’t contain any of your target search keywords, you’re going to have to rewrite it! Start from scratch if you have to. The secret is to focus. Search engines aren’t going to rank your web site about socks highly if your body copy talks about foot sizes. You need to get specific. It sounds really obvious, but if you sell socks, make sure your site copy has plenty of references to the word socks! If you sell green wool socks, target the phrase "green wool socks" and not "foot apparel in lovely shades of emerald"! Who's going to search for socks using that phrase?
At the risk of sounding like Dr Seuss, if you want to be found for, big socks, small socks, cotton socks and wool socks, then mention them all. Better still, sort your copy into categories based on your various products and services. If you sell wool socks AND cotton socks, then have a page dedicated to each kind. This allows you to target niche keywords within your copy and meet the search engine's relevancy guidelines for related search queries.
Keyword Integration
So imagine you've added plenty of text to your pages and the copy flows well for the reader. You've researched your keywords and phrases and now you're faced with the dilemma of integrating the keywords into your copy. So how do you satisfy the search engine's craving for keywords without interrupting the copy flow for the reader? The answer is: very carefully.
Let's take a look at a practical example. We have a client that specializes in luxury adventure travel. Before I optimized their site, part of the home page copy read like this:
"We specialize in providing vacations for people who want a personal service. We bring to our efforts a fanatical obsession with quality and exclusivity. We also bring a freshness, an outward-going passion for discovery which justifies our growing reputation as one of the world's top travel providers. We can put together packages that include all adventure activities, accommodation, transport and food".
Extensive Keyword Discovery keyword research for the client had determined that the site should target the following key phrases:
• adventure travel
• best adventure vacations
• tailored travel
• overseas adventure travel
• luxury travel packages
So taking our original home page text, the challenge was to integrate these keywords carefully and naturally so as not to disturb the logical flow of the copy and lose the interest of the visitor. Here's how I did it:
"We specialize in providing the best adventure vacations for people who want a personal and tailored travel service. We bring to our efforts a fanatical obsession with quality and exclusivity. We also bring a freshness, an outward-going passion for discovery which justifies our growing reputation as one of the world's top overseas adventure travel providers. We can put together luxury travel packages that include all adventure activities, accommodation, transport and food".
Note that the key phrase "overseas adventure travel" accommodates the phrase "adventure travel" too. Voila! The search engines are happy because the site contains text content relevant to related search queries, the client is happy because we were able to integrate the keywords without distracting the visitor and I'm happy because I know the site is going to rank highly for the client's target search terms.
Now it’s your turn – go tackle your web site copy!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Search engines read text and not much else. Because they can’t generally index graphics, search engines rely on the text in web sites to provide information about the site content, which they can compare with search queries.
Webmasters therefore need to use body text on any pages on the site that they want indexed by the search engines and ranked highly for matching search queries. Not graphical text that was created in design software, but actual, visible body text. Not sure if your site uses graphical or body text? A good rule of thumb that I learnt from search engine guru Danny Sullivan is to try and highlight the text with your mouse. If you can drag your mouse over individual words in the text when viewing it in a browser, chances are this is body text and the search engines can read it.
The most important page on which to use body text is the home page. Above is an example of a home page that uses graphical text instead of body text. Figure 1 shows what content the site visitors see, while Figure 2 shows the content a search engine sees and indexes.
How much information about a site’s content does a page like the one above provide a search engine? That’s right, very little. With next to no text to be found, the search engine would have to rely on the page’s Title and META Tags to tell it what the page is about. With such little information to go on, it is unlikely that a search engine would consider this page a relevant match for search queries relating to its content. To remedy this, it is widely recommended that each web page you want listed in search engines should contain at least 250 words of visible body text.
Keyword-Rich Text
While it’s a good idea to use plenty of body text on web pages, if that text doesn’t contain relevant keywords and phrases that people type in to the search engines, there’s not much point, because a site isn’t going to be found for logical search queries anyway. Many web sites make the mistake of including text on their site that is either unrelated to their products and services, or full of marketing-speak like “Internet solutions†or “superior servicesâ€. The Internet is plagued with web sites selling particular items without once making reference to those items in their site text. Weird huh?
For a search engine to find a site relevant for a particular search query, it MUST find that search query somewhere in that site. The easiest way to ensure this is to include logical keywords and phrases within the visible text on web pages, as well as in the Title and META tags. The best way for webmasters to find keywords that searchers are actually using is by conducting keyword research of their target market on a site such as Keyword Discovery or WordTracker.
Once it is determined what search terms perspective visitors are commonly typing in to search engines, they can then be compared to the goods and services offered on the site and the body text can be adjusted accordingly. Sites lacking any keyword research tend to use very generic, unfocused body copy, or sales-oriented “hypeâ€. Neither style contributes to high search engine rankings.
Target keywords and search phrases placed strategically throughout your body copy give your pages a much higher ranking potential on search engines for related searches. But it’s not as easy as throwing the keywords into your site text willy-nilly. You must ensure that the keywords are integrated seamlessly so their repetition is unobvious and so that the text flows smoothly for the reader.
Don't compromise the readability of your copy to achieve this - hire an expert copywriter to strike the right balance if need be.
SEO Copywriting
Before writing your web site copy, you should research potential keywords and phrases that your target audience may use in search engines and then narrow the list down to your priority terms for each page, sorted in order of importance. You should then use those target search terms as a basis for the creation of optimized Title and META tags for each page on your site. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to integrate those same target search terms into your visible web page copy. We call this SEO copywriting. But exactly how do we do it?
Speak to Your Audience
Don’t lose site of the reader when writing your body copy. Integrating your keywords is important, but not if you are sacrificing the readability of your site and losing the attention of your audience. Put yourself in their shoes like you did when researching your keywords. What are they looking for? What do they need? How will your product/service help them? Does it represent value for money?
Be emotive when describing your products and services. Describe how your product/service will make them feel or look, how it will improve their lives, give them more time etc. Use trigger words that people respond to such as “freeâ€, “successâ€, “youâ€, “cash†etc. Not sure what these are? Check out Words That Sell reports. These reports are perfect if you are targeting a specific industry or profession because they define what keywords people in over 38 industries respond to and what they expect when making a buying decision.
Not sure who your audience is or what they’re looking for? Why not ask them? Use a free survey service such as Survey Monkey to learn more about them so you can write “to†them and not “at†them. You could even draft various styles of body copy and obtain feedback from your site visitors to determine what copywriting style works better for them.
Use Easy to Understand Language
The Internet is no place for verbosity. People are in a hurry - they want to find what they seek quickly and easily with the least hassle possible. You can help them in this quest by ensuring your site pages use simple language and easy to grasp concepts throughout. For example instead of "brand-building web information architects", use "website designers specializing in brand promotion". Keep the large chunks of text on each page to a minimum, using bullet points, white space, graphics, lists and sub-headings to break it up and make it easier to read. This rule of thumb is especially important when creating landing pages for pay per click and other advertising campaigns.
Use examples to get your main points across or to demonstrate your product benefits. Use the old WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) adage when composing your body copy to keep the user's interests at top of mind. Remember your international visitors by incorporating regional word usage (such as organize versus organize or jewelry versus jewellery) and avoid technical jargon that could alienate. Want your visitor to take a particular action? Spell it out for them in plain English, for example Click here to Buy Now, Subscribe to our free newsletter, Bookmark this page now etc. These references are called “Calls to Actionâ€.
Build Your Copy Around Your Keywords
You should always build your page copy around your keywords and not the other way around. If your existing page copy doesn’t contain any of your target search keywords, you’re going to have to rewrite it! Start from scratch if you have to. The secret is to focus. Search engines aren’t going to rank your web site about socks highly if your body copy talks about foot sizes. You need to get specific. It sounds really obvious, but if you sell socks, make sure your site copy has plenty of references to the word socks! If you sell green wool socks, target the phrase "green wool socks" and not "foot apparel in lovely shades of emerald"! Who's going to search for socks using that phrase?
At the risk of sounding like Dr Seuss, if you want to be found for, big socks, small socks, cotton socks and wool socks, then mention them all. Better still, sort your copy into categories based on your various products and services. If you sell wool socks AND cotton socks, then have a page dedicated to each kind. This allows you to target niche keywords within your copy and meet the search engine's relevancy guidelines for related search queries.
Keyword Integration
So imagine you've added plenty of text to your pages and the copy flows well for the reader. You've researched your keywords and phrases and now you're faced with the dilemma of integrating the keywords into your copy. So how do you satisfy the search engine's craving for keywords without interrupting the copy flow for the reader? The answer is: very carefully.
Let's take a look at a practical example. We have a client that specializes in luxury adventure travel. Before I optimized their site, part of the home page copy read like this:
"We specialize in providing vacations for people who want a personal service. We bring to our efforts a fanatical obsession with quality and exclusivity. We also bring a freshness, an outward-going passion for discovery which justifies our growing reputation as one of the world's top travel providers. We can put together packages that include all adventure activities, accommodation, transport and food".
Extensive Keyword Discovery keyword research for the client had determined that the site should target the following key phrases:
• adventure travel
• best adventure vacations
• tailored travel
• overseas adventure travel
• luxury travel packages
So taking our original home page text, the challenge was to integrate these keywords carefully and naturally so as not to disturb the logical flow of the copy and lose the interest of the visitor. Here's how I did it:
"We specialize in providing the best adventure vacations for people who want a personal and tailored travel service. We bring to our efforts a fanatical obsession with quality and exclusivity. We also bring a freshness, an outward-going passion for discovery which justifies our growing reputation as one of the world's top overseas adventure travel providers. We can put together luxury travel packages that include all adventure activities, accommodation, transport and food".
Note that the key phrase "overseas adventure travel" accommodates the phrase "adventure travel" too. Voila! The search engines are happy because the site contains text content relevant to related search queries, the client is happy because we were able to integrate the keywords without distracting the visitor and I'm happy because I know the site is going to rank highly for the client's target search terms.
Now it’s your turn – go tackle your web site copy!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Create META Tags 2
Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this article, I defined Title Elements and META Tags and took you step-by-step through how to create an optimized Title Element. Now it's time to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.
Create Your META Description Tag
Now it's time to create your optimized META Description Tag.
Take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Description Tag as your template. Let's say our existing description is:
[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]
You can make your META Description Tag as long as you like, but only a certain portion of it will get indexed and displayed by search engines. According to Danny Sullivan in his article How to Use HTML Meta Tags, 200 to 250 characters of the META Description gets indexed but less than that gets displayed, depending on the search engine. So you want to make sure all your important keywords are listed towards the start of the tag.
Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets
Now you need to create a readable sentence or two describing your web site and incorporating these keywords so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available.
Because search engines often display the contents of the META Description Tag in the search results, it is very important that your sentences make grammatical sense and are enticing enough to encourage readers to click on your link. Let's start with:
If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions.
Ok, so that's around 150 characters long and gets our three important keyword phrases included. But it’s a bit bland. We need to add something to entice the searcher to click on it. How about:
Order online for a 10 percent discount!
So now we have the following completed META Description Tag:
[META name="description" content="If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions. Order online for a 10 percent discount!"]
Our new tag is optimized for our keyword phrases, it's around 200 characters in length, it describes our site accurately, it speaks to the reader and it (hopefully) entices them to click on the link and view the site.
Create Your META Keywords Tag
We're almost there. Now it's time to create your optimized META Keywords Tag. Let me stress here that this Tag is quite unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Not many of the search crawlers even support it any more. You can see which ones do on this page. If you have the time and you really want to create META Keywords tags for your pages, then go ahead, but if not, then leave them out of your code altogether. This tag will have very little impact on your overall SEO campaign.
Assuming you do want to create a Keywords tag, take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Keywords Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Keywords Tag is:
[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]
You are just including a list of related keywords to include in this tag. Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets
Because you have a lot more room in this tag, a good rule of thumb for creating a META Keywords Tag is to include the keywords and phrases your are targeting with your site content, as well as some terms that you don't necessarily want to use in your site copy but are still relevant to the site content. For example, the site copy, TITLE and META description tags would include the most important search keywords, but the META Keywords Tag could be used for keyword variations and combinations that don't appear in the visible site text, but that people may also search for. Examples include plurals, contractions, slang, variations, misspellings, cultural nuances and industry jargon.
For our fictional florist, these may include things like:
- wedding flowers
- roses
- wedding roses
- Valentine's Day roses
- sympathy gifts
- Mother's Day gifts
- funeral wreaths
- flower deliveries
- floral arrangements
- birthday gifts
- flowers
- flowers for wedding
- wedding decorations
So now we have the following draft META Keywords Tag:
[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami, florists Florida, wedding bouquets, wedding flowers, roses, wedding roses, Valentine's Day roses, sympathy gifts, Mother's Day gifts, funeral wreaths, flower deliveries, floral arrangements, birthday gifts, flowers, flowers for wedding, wedding decorations"]
However, when creating your Keywords Tag, you should not repeat any particular keywords within your META Keywords Tag more than five times and exclude commas so that all your keywords can be indexed in combination with each other.
So we need to fix the draft tag to remove the excess repetition of the words "flowers" and "weddings". This is easy to do because some of the keyword phrases already incorporate these single generic keywords.
For starters, we can lose the single "flowers" as it is already covered by some of the other phrases like "wedding flowers". Next, we can drop "roses" for the same reason. Then we can combine some keyword phrases together to save space, e.g. "flowers for wedding" and "wedding decorations" can be integrated to become "flowers for wedding decorations" so we can lose the extra instance of "wedding".
So now we have the following completed META Keywords Tag:
[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami florists Florida wedding bouquets wedding flowers wedding roses Valentine's Day roses sympathy gifts Mother's Day gifts funeral wreaths flower deliveries floral arrangements birthday gifts flowers for wedding decorations"]
Tailored TITLE and META Tags
While some webmasters remember to include a META Description and a META Keywords Tag in their home page HTML code, many forget to include them on every page of the site that they want indexed. Or worse, they duplicate the homepage TITLE and META Tags on all other pages. To give a web site the best ranking ability possible, it is highly recommended that each page of the site include a unique TITLE tag and unique META tags, individually tailored to the content of that specific page.
For example, our fictional Miami florist may have a page devoted to wedding bouquets and another devoted to funeral wreaths. The TITLE and META tags for the first page should include keywords relating to weddings and the page about wreaths should utilize keywords relating to funerals and sympathy.
The use of tailored TITLE and META Tags on each page creates multiple entry points to a web site and enables relevant content to be found in search engines no matter where it resides on a site. For example, instead of relying on visitors to arrive via the Home Page, the optimization of individual site pages makes each page more visible in the search engines, providing additional gateways to the site's content. The more pages optimized, the wider the range of keywords and phrases that can be targeted and the more entry points are created to a site.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
In Part 1 of this article, I defined Title Elements and META Tags and took you step-by-step through how to create an optimized Title Element. Now it's time to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.
Create Your META Description Tag
Now it's time to create your optimized META Description Tag.
Take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Description Tag as your template. Let's say our existing description is:
[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]
You can make your META Description Tag as long as you like, but only a certain portion of it will get indexed and displayed by search engines. According to Danny Sullivan in his article How to Use HTML Meta Tags, 200 to 250 characters of the META Description gets indexed but less than that gets displayed, depending on the search engine. So you want to make sure all your important keywords are listed towards the start of the tag.
Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets
Now you need to create a readable sentence or two describing your web site and incorporating these keywords so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available.
Because search engines often display the contents of the META Description Tag in the search results, it is very important that your sentences make grammatical sense and are enticing enough to encourage readers to click on your link. Let's start with:
If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions.
Ok, so that's around 150 characters long and gets our three important keyword phrases included. But it’s a bit bland. We need to add something to entice the searcher to click on it. How about:
Order online for a 10 percent discount!
So now we have the following completed META Description Tag:
[META name="description" content="If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions. Order online for a 10 percent discount!"]
Our new tag is optimized for our keyword phrases, it's around 200 characters in length, it describes our site accurately, it speaks to the reader and it (hopefully) entices them to click on the link and view the site.
Create Your META Keywords Tag
We're almost there. Now it's time to create your optimized META Keywords Tag. Let me stress here that this Tag is quite unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Not many of the search crawlers even support it any more. You can see which ones do on this page. If you have the time and you really want to create META Keywords tags for your pages, then go ahead, but if not, then leave them out of your code altogether. This tag will have very little impact on your overall SEO campaign.
Assuming you do want to create a Keywords tag, take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Keywords Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Keywords Tag is:
[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]
You are just including a list of related keywords to include in this tag. Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets
Because you have a lot more room in this tag, a good rule of thumb for creating a META Keywords Tag is to include the keywords and phrases your are targeting with your site content, as well as some terms that you don't necessarily want to use in your site copy but are still relevant to the site content. For example, the site copy, TITLE and META description tags would include the most important search keywords, but the META Keywords Tag could be used for keyword variations and combinations that don't appear in the visible site text, but that people may also search for. Examples include plurals, contractions, slang, variations, misspellings, cultural nuances and industry jargon.
For our fictional florist, these may include things like:
- wedding flowers
- roses
- wedding roses
- Valentine's Day roses
- sympathy gifts
- Mother's Day gifts
- funeral wreaths
- flower deliveries
- floral arrangements
- birthday gifts
- flowers
- flowers for wedding
- wedding decorations
So now we have the following draft META Keywords Tag:
[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami, florists Florida, wedding bouquets, wedding flowers, roses, wedding roses, Valentine's Day roses, sympathy gifts, Mother's Day gifts, funeral wreaths, flower deliveries, floral arrangements, birthday gifts, flowers, flowers for wedding, wedding decorations"]
However, when creating your Keywords Tag, you should not repeat any particular keywords within your META Keywords Tag more than five times and exclude commas so that all your keywords can be indexed in combination with each other.
So we need to fix the draft tag to remove the excess repetition of the words "flowers" and "weddings". This is easy to do because some of the keyword phrases already incorporate these single generic keywords.
For starters, we can lose the single "flowers" as it is already covered by some of the other phrases like "wedding flowers". Next, we can drop "roses" for the same reason. Then we can combine some keyword phrases together to save space, e.g. "flowers for wedding" and "wedding decorations" can be integrated to become "flowers for wedding decorations" so we can lose the extra instance of "wedding".
So now we have the following completed META Keywords Tag:
[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami florists Florida wedding bouquets wedding flowers wedding roses Valentine's Day roses sympathy gifts Mother's Day gifts funeral wreaths flower deliveries floral arrangements birthday gifts flowers for wedding decorations"]
Tailored TITLE and META Tags
While some webmasters remember to include a META Description and a META Keywords Tag in their home page HTML code, many forget to include them on every page of the site that they want indexed. Or worse, they duplicate the homepage TITLE and META Tags on all other pages. To give a web site the best ranking ability possible, it is highly recommended that each page of the site include a unique TITLE tag and unique META tags, individually tailored to the content of that specific page.
For example, our fictional Miami florist may have a page devoted to wedding bouquets and another devoted to funeral wreaths. The TITLE and META tags for the first page should include keywords relating to weddings and the page about wreaths should utilize keywords relating to funerals and sympathy.
The use of tailored TITLE and META Tags on each page creates multiple entry points to a web site and enables relevant content to be found in search engines no matter where it resides on a site. For example, instead of relying on visitors to arrive via the Home Page, the optimization of individual site pages makes each page more visible in the search engines, providing additional gateways to the site's content. The more pages optimized, the wider the range of keywords and phrases that can be targeted and the more entry points are created to a site.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Create META Tags
Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 1)
In this article, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create search engine optimized Titles and META Tags. This is a two part article. This part discusses the Title Element, also known as the Title Element. (Click here to read Part Two).
The TITLE Element
TITLE elements, (commonly called TITLE Tags), are one of the most important factors that search engines "look" at when it comes to determining the relevancy of a web page against a search query. In their ranking algorithms, nearly all the major search engines attribute a high relevancy weight to the content of the TITLE tag.
In the HTML code of a web site, TITLE tags look like this one for a fictional florist:
[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]
(Please note that square brackets [ ] have been used in place of open and closing tags < > to prevent this page code from breaking. You'll need to replace all square brackets with open and closing tags.)
To view the HTML code of any site, choose "View, Source" from your browser toolbar or right click anywhere on the page and choose "view source code".
The META Description Tag
META Description Tags are designed to describe the content of web pages. Search engine robots will gather up this information when indexing web sites and often use it when referencing web pages in the search listings.
While not all search engines continue to utilize the META Description Tag, a majority of search engines rely on the content of this tag (together with a site's visible content) to provide information about a site that they can match with search queries. It is therefore important for webmasters to include keywords and phrases in the META description that they would expect searchers to use to find their site content.
In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Description Tag looks like this:
[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]
You can view the META Description Tag of a site by viewing the source code.
The META Keywords Tag
While only indexed by a small handful of search engines these days, the META Keywords Tag is still worth including within a site's HTML code, if only to provide those search engines with as much information as possible about site content.
In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Keywords Tag looks like this:
[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]
The current lack of support for the META Keywords Tag by so many search engines can be attributed to increasing spam abuse by ignorant webmasters. These webmasters thought the keyword tag was a good place to stuff hundreds of keywords in the hope of achieving a higher search ranking, thereby "spamming" the search engines with useless, non-relevant data. This prompted many search engines to filter out the META Keywords Tag or lower its importance within the ranking algorithm.
You can view the META Keywords Tag of a site by viewing the source code.
Create Your Own Optimized Tags
Now, it's time to create optimized TITLE and META Tags for your own site. Let's start with the TITLE Tag for your Home Page.
Create Your TITLE Tag
Take the list of target keywords and phrases that you want your web site to be found for in search engines. You should have already allocated them to the appropriate pages of your site to be optimized. I use a spreadsheet for this purpose but you should use whatever works for you.
Now, open a text file in Notepad or something similar. If you like, you can use an existing sample TITLE Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Title is:
[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]
Now take your list of keywords for the home page and put them in order of importance, with the ones you want to rank highest for at the top. For our fictional florist these are:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets
Now you are simply going to combine these keywords into a sentence or short blurb so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available. Always try to use as few words as possible in your Title Tags, because each additional keyword dilutes the ranking relevancy of all the others.
In this case, I would initially combine the keywords as follows:
Florists in Miami Florida specializing in wedding bouquets.
Notice how I've got the keywords in the correct order for the search queries? I've tried to include the most important keywords towards the start of the tag. There was no need for me to repeat the keyword "Florists" more than once because the sentence I've used covers both "Florists Miami" and "Florists Florida". Most search engines will ignore "in" as a stop word, so it shouldn't matter that we've included it.
Although it's tempting to put a comma between Miami and Florida, on some search engines commas act as a keyword separator, so we don’t want to use one here because we don't want "Florists" and "Florida" to be separated.
Now, there is just one problem with this draft Title. Our 3rd keyword phrase "wedding bouquets" is right at the end of the sentence, meaning it may lose some relevancy weight (search engines consider keywords closer to the start of the tag as the most important). How do we fix this? Let's try this:
Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.
We don't want to use a period after "Florida" for the same reason that we don't use a comma. But a hyphen should not make a difference to search engines yet still allow the sentence to read logically to a searcher. So now we have our three target keyword phrases covered in a very short space.
In fact, the above sentence now covers the following keyword combinations:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- florists in Miami
- florists in Florida
- florists in Miami Florida
- wedding bouquets
- Miami wedding bouquets
- Florida wedding bouquets
When integrating your keywords, remember that their order is important. If you want your site to have the best possible chance of being found for the search query "Miami florists", you need to put the keywords in that exact order and not "florists Miami", because the spider searches the keywords in exact order. Unless they are stop words, also try to avoid using extra words between your keywords.
If you wanted to, you could integrate your company name into the Title tag, but (unless your company name is super short or includes a keyword), don’t sacrifice a keyword to do so. Instead, try placing the company name at the end of the tag so you can be sure that all your important keywords will be indexed first.
In the case of our florist, let’s imagine their name was Funky Florists. We could easily accommodate the name into the beginning of our optimized Title as follows:
[TITLE]Funky Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.[/TITLE]
It may reduce the keyword relevancy impact very slightly, but including your company name enables you to brand your page, which may be more important to you.
The content of the Title Tag is also what gets saved in a person's Favorite’s list when they bookmark your site, so having your company name included is worth considering from a branding perspective.
In Part 2 of this article, I will show you how to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
In this article, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create search engine optimized Titles and META Tags. This is a two part article. This part discusses the Title Element, also known as the Title Element. (Click here to read Part Two).
The TITLE Element
TITLE elements, (commonly called TITLE Tags), are one of the most important factors that search engines "look" at when it comes to determining the relevancy of a web page against a search query. In their ranking algorithms, nearly all the major search engines attribute a high relevancy weight to the content of the TITLE tag.
In the HTML code of a web site, TITLE tags look like this one for a fictional florist:
[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]
(Please note that square brackets [ ] have been used in place of open and closing tags < > to prevent this page code from breaking. You'll need to replace all square brackets with open and closing tags.)
To view the HTML code of any site, choose "View, Source" from your browser toolbar or right click anywhere on the page and choose "view source code".
The META Description Tag
META Description Tags are designed to describe the content of web pages. Search engine robots will gather up this information when indexing web sites and often use it when referencing web pages in the search listings.
While not all search engines continue to utilize the META Description Tag, a majority of search engines rely on the content of this tag (together with a site's visible content) to provide information about a site that they can match with search queries. It is therefore important for webmasters to include keywords and phrases in the META description that they would expect searchers to use to find their site content.
In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Description Tag looks like this:
[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]
You can view the META Description Tag of a site by viewing the source code.
The META Keywords Tag
While only indexed by a small handful of search engines these days, the META Keywords Tag is still worth including within a site's HTML code, if only to provide those search engines with as much information as possible about site content.
In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Keywords Tag looks like this:
[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]
The current lack of support for the META Keywords Tag by so many search engines can be attributed to increasing spam abuse by ignorant webmasters. These webmasters thought the keyword tag was a good place to stuff hundreds of keywords in the hope of achieving a higher search ranking, thereby "spamming" the search engines with useless, non-relevant data. This prompted many search engines to filter out the META Keywords Tag or lower its importance within the ranking algorithm.
You can view the META Keywords Tag of a site by viewing the source code.
Create Your Own Optimized Tags
Now, it's time to create optimized TITLE and META Tags for your own site. Let's start with the TITLE Tag for your Home Page.
Create Your TITLE Tag
Take the list of target keywords and phrases that you want your web site to be found for in search engines. You should have already allocated them to the appropriate pages of your site to be optimized. I use a spreadsheet for this purpose but you should use whatever works for you.
Now, open a text file in Notepad or something similar. If you like, you can use an existing sample TITLE Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Title is:
[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]
Now take your list of keywords for the home page and put them in order of importance, with the ones you want to rank highest for at the top. For our fictional florist these are:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets
Now you are simply going to combine these keywords into a sentence or short blurb so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available. Always try to use as few words as possible in your Title Tags, because each additional keyword dilutes the ranking relevancy of all the others.
In this case, I would initially combine the keywords as follows:
Florists in Miami Florida specializing in wedding bouquets.
Notice how I've got the keywords in the correct order for the search queries? I've tried to include the most important keywords towards the start of the tag. There was no need for me to repeat the keyword "Florists" more than once because the sentence I've used covers both "Florists Miami" and "Florists Florida". Most search engines will ignore "in" as a stop word, so it shouldn't matter that we've included it.
Although it's tempting to put a comma between Miami and Florida, on some search engines commas act as a keyword separator, so we don’t want to use one here because we don't want "Florists" and "Florida" to be separated.
Now, there is just one problem with this draft Title. Our 3rd keyword phrase "wedding bouquets" is right at the end of the sentence, meaning it may lose some relevancy weight (search engines consider keywords closer to the start of the tag as the most important). How do we fix this? Let's try this:
Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.
We don't want to use a period after "Florida" for the same reason that we don't use a comma. But a hyphen should not make a difference to search engines yet still allow the sentence to read logically to a searcher. So now we have our three target keyword phrases covered in a very short space.
In fact, the above sentence now covers the following keyword combinations:
- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- florists in Miami
- florists in Florida
- florists in Miami Florida
- wedding bouquets
- Miami wedding bouquets
- Florida wedding bouquets
When integrating your keywords, remember that their order is important. If you want your site to have the best possible chance of being found for the search query "Miami florists", you need to put the keywords in that exact order and not "florists Miami", because the spider searches the keywords in exact order. Unless they are stop words, also try to avoid using extra words between your keywords.
If you wanted to, you could integrate your company name into the Title tag, but (unless your company name is super short or includes a keyword), don’t sacrifice a keyword to do so. Instead, try placing the company name at the end of the tag so you can be sure that all your important keywords will be indexed first.
In the case of our florist, let’s imagine their name was Funky Florists. We could easily accommodate the name into the beginning of our optimized Title as follows:
[TITLE]Funky Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.[/TITLE]
It may reduce the keyword relevancy impact very slightly, but including your company name enables you to brand your page, which may be more important to you.
The content of the Title Tag is also what gets saved in a person's Favorite’s list when they bookmark your site, so having your company name included is worth considering from a branding perspective.
In Part 2 of this article, I will show you how to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Search Engine Steps
3 steps to a Search Engine Compatible Site
Is your web site search engine compatible? Despite all the misinformation out there, it's very easy to design a web site that search engines will love. All you need to do is follow 3 simple steps:
1) Obey the Search Engine Guidelines
Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be 'spam'. They also published SEO Guidelines – advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.
It's not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You'll find them at the following search engine sites as well:
Yahoo terms of service
Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
Yahoo content guidelines
MSN Search webmaster guidelines
AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
Ask.com terms of service and spam policy
Ask.com editorial guidelines
2) Don’t Use Spammy Search Engine Tactics
Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site's rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner's knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn't use any of the latest optimization methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.
Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Is your web site search engine compatible? Despite all the misinformation out there, it's very easy to design a web site that search engines will love. All you need to do is follow 3 simple steps:
1) Obey the Search Engine Guidelines
Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be 'spam'. They also published SEO Guidelines – advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.
It's not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You'll find them at the following search engine sites as well:
Yahoo terms of service
Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
Yahoo content guidelines
MSN Search webmaster guidelines
AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
Ask.com terms of service and spam policy
Ask.com editorial guidelines
2) Don’t Use Spammy Search Engine Tactics
Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site's rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner's knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn't use any of the latest optimization methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.
Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Instant Brand Killer
Social Media: The Instant Brand Killer
With the increasing uptake of social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target markets via a whole new channel.
Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies can release a new product in the morning and have it talked about by millions of users on thousands of sites by the afternoon.
The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.
Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg Being Dugg.
Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers are calling it the "Digg Effect" or the "Slashdot Effect". Buzz for a site can cause more than good or bad publicity. As Kim found out, the effect can cause traffic overload sometimes resulting in site downtime and lost business.
Social media can also kill the reputation of a brand instantly. Take the Microsoft Windows Vista Laptop Scandal for instance. No stranger to the benefits of social media, Microsoft had allegedly tried to exploit the power of the blogosphere at the end of last year, by sending a number of A-list bloggers a free Acer Ferrari laptop loaded with the yet-to-be-released Windows Vista and Office 2007.
The pitch was a request for the bloggers to "review" the new Windows software in their influential blogs. Many bloggers did write a review, but some did not disclose their free gift. When this fact was discovered later, the bloggers were hammered by large portions of the blogosphere for what they saw as a clear conflict of interest. Microsoft were tagged both literally and figuratively as bribers and Windows Vista was widely panned with parody tag lines such as "Vista: So Bad We Had to Give it Away". Not a great start to an online product release.
Another example of the damage that social networking can do to a company's online reputation is the National Pork Board of America's recent battle with breastfeeding advocate and well-known blogger Jennifer Laycock. Jennifer was sent a harshly worded letter from the Pork Board's representing counsel, threatening her with legal action for allegedly stealing their pro-pork slogan "Pork: The Other White Meat" in a pro-breastfeeding t-shirt she had designed that read "The Other White Milk".
The letter suggested that their case for trademark infringement was probably solid. Unfortunately for the Pork Board, the poorly-worded letter also suggested that they were insensitive to breastfeeding mothers and the plight of starving infants. The Pork Board didn't count on Jennifer's influence in the blogosphere and the power of social networking to carry her defiant response to the world. The Pork Board ended up receiving bags of hate mail and thousands of flame emails via their online contact form, forcing them to issue a public apology to Jennifer from the Board's CEO and a generous donation to the Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio in order to save face.
To their credit, the Pork Board did the right thing. They also made sure that all persons who complained about their approach to Jennifer received a polite, measured email response from the CEO. As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them. Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It demonstrates how seriously they took the complaints. The wording of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing each and every complainer personally is impressive. It would've been tempting to ignore all the flames and issue some stock standard release.
Their choice of legal team may have been questionable, but the Pork Board's public relations team mobilized quickly, upgraded to full damage control mode and did a great job of mopping up the PR mess before it spread too far. Social media might have damaged them, but the Pork Board's reputation was ultimately salvaged by quick thinking and a swift online response.
Such situations underscore the growing importance of online reputation management (ORM) in our Web 2.0, social media-driven world. Companies should be tracking their online reputation on a daily basis to check for negative commentary via social media in order to avert potential PR disasters. Major search marketing players such as Andy Beal recognized the potential growth in ORM a long time ago. But I wonder how many PR/Search Marketing agencies currently offer this service?
With brand reputation increasingly at risk, you can be sure the smart agencies will be adding ORM to their service offerings faster than you can say "Can you Digg it?"
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
With the increasing uptake of social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target markets via a whole new channel.
Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies can release a new product in the morning and have it talked about by millions of users on thousands of sites by the afternoon.
The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.
Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg Being Dugg.
Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers are calling it the "Digg Effect" or the "Slashdot Effect". Buzz for a site can cause more than good or bad publicity. As Kim found out, the effect can cause traffic overload sometimes resulting in site downtime and lost business.
Social media can also kill the reputation of a brand instantly. Take the Microsoft Windows Vista Laptop Scandal for instance. No stranger to the benefits of social media, Microsoft had allegedly tried to exploit the power of the blogosphere at the end of last year, by sending a number of A-list bloggers a free Acer Ferrari laptop loaded with the yet-to-be-released Windows Vista and Office 2007.
The pitch was a request for the bloggers to "review" the new Windows software in their influential blogs. Many bloggers did write a review, but some did not disclose their free gift. When this fact was discovered later, the bloggers were hammered by large portions of the blogosphere for what they saw as a clear conflict of interest. Microsoft were tagged both literally and figuratively as bribers and Windows Vista was widely panned with parody tag lines such as "Vista: So Bad We Had to Give it Away". Not a great start to an online product release.
Another example of the damage that social networking can do to a company's online reputation is the National Pork Board of America's recent battle with breastfeeding advocate and well-known blogger Jennifer Laycock. Jennifer was sent a harshly worded letter from the Pork Board's representing counsel, threatening her with legal action for allegedly stealing their pro-pork slogan "Pork: The Other White Meat" in a pro-breastfeeding t-shirt she had designed that read "The Other White Milk".
The letter suggested that their case for trademark infringement was probably solid. Unfortunately for the Pork Board, the poorly-worded letter also suggested that they were insensitive to breastfeeding mothers and the plight of starving infants. The Pork Board didn't count on Jennifer's influence in the blogosphere and the power of social networking to carry her defiant response to the world. The Pork Board ended up receiving bags of hate mail and thousands of flame emails via their online contact form, forcing them to issue a public apology to Jennifer from the Board's CEO and a generous donation to the Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio in order to save face.
To their credit, the Pork Board did the right thing. They also made sure that all persons who complained about their approach to Jennifer received a polite, measured email response from the CEO. As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them. Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It demonstrates how seriously they took the complaints. The wording of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing each and every complainer personally is impressive. It would've been tempting to ignore all the flames and issue some stock standard release.
Their choice of legal team may have been questionable, but the Pork Board's public relations team mobilized quickly, upgraded to full damage control mode and did a great job of mopping up the PR mess before it spread too far. Social media might have damaged them, but the Pork Board's reputation was ultimately salvaged by quick thinking and a swift online response.
Such situations underscore the growing importance of online reputation management (ORM) in our Web 2.0, social media-driven world. Companies should be tracking their online reputation on a daily basis to check for negative commentary via social media in order to avert potential PR disasters. Major search marketing players such as Andy Beal recognized the potential growth in ORM a long time ago. But I wonder how many PR/Search Marketing agencies currently offer this service?
With brand reputation increasingly at risk, you can be sure the smart agencies will be adding ORM to their service offerings faster than you can say "Can you Digg it?"
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Think Global Act Global:
Think Global Act Global: Writing for your online market
When you write web site content and design your pages, do you truly act with your target audience in mind? Or do you think global and act local?
I am amazed at the number of web sites I see that claim to target a global market, yet design and write their content for a regionally-specific audience. Not sure what I mean? Take the site I saw yesterday, for example. I won't embarrass the site owners by pointing to the specific domain, but let's just say the site is based in the U.S. and sells high quality gold chains throughout North America, Europe and Australia.
Now the owner of this site was complaining loudly in a webmaster forum that his pay-per-click campaign was having no luck converting sales from overseas visitors, particularly in the UK and Australia. He had spent a long time developing and tweaking a landing page for the campaign and he couldn't work out why hardly anyone outside the U.S. was buying. I took a look at his landing page and could see the problems straight away:
1) He used the American English spelling "jewelry" throughout the page without considering that persons who use British English spell it "jewellery".
2) He provided a toll-free phone number for persons in the U.S. to call, but did not provide any contact phone number for persons located outside the U.S.
3) He used the word "national" throughout the page, immediately isolating anyone outside the U.S.
4) He promoted "free shipping throughout the U.S." but did not specify shipping costs for persons outside the U.S.
The owner of this site had not even considered that persons outside the U.S. might search for keywords in anything other than American English. It didn't even occur to him that there may be an alternative spelling of his main keyword and he didn't think about the logistics for purchasers outside his country. No wonder the page wasn't converting outside the U.S.! He had made the classic mistake of isolating a large chunk of his audience by sending everyone to a one-size-fits-some page.
What he should have done was to create a separate landing page using British English spelling and shipping/contact information applicable to persons overseas. He could then have set up a unique PPC campaign targeting only UK/Australian searchers with regional keywords and ads leading to the British English landing page.
I see similar problems occur quite often in the online travel industry where you not only have to deal with regional spelling options, but also regional jargon. Think about the word "accommodation". Apart from the fact the word is commonly misspelled, it is used most often in the UK, Australia and New Zealand to describe places to stay while traveling. In the U.S., the words "accommodations" and "lodging" are more commonly used. Same goes for "holiday" and "vacation", with the latter being more common in the U.S. The word "traveling" itself is spelled "travelling" in British English! So you can imagine the minefield of problems webmasters must face promoting their travel sites online to a worldwide audience.
I don't mean to single out a particular country, but Americans seem to find it especially difficult to step outside their regional mindset. I am always receiving emails from the U.S. with helpful suggestions for fixing my "spelling mistakes".
The funniest email exchange I ever had in relation to this was from an American web designer. She had seen our Australian-based web site (with a .com.au domain) and emailed me to tell me it was "full of errors" and that if I wanted to present a professional business to site visitors, I should correct them. So condescending! I asked her to elaborate and she pointed me to these words she felt were spelled incorrectly:
optimisation
counselling
organised
enrolment
colour
catalogue
favourite
centre
Resisting the urge to use a few offensive words I'm sure she would recognize, I tactfully explained that our site was only targeting the Australian market and that we use British English spelling in Australia. Her response? Perhaps if we wanted to be taken seriously by an international audience, we should consider using the "more proper" American English. Flabbergasted, I pointed out the fact that American English was a derivative of British English and was not widely used outside her own country. Wikipedia has more about the differences between the two here. And let’s not forget that although it is the most common language used on the web, English is used by less than 30 percent of the world’s total Internet users.
The point of this story is that you absolutely have to think outside your market if you are going to advertise on the web. As ignorant as she was, my email friend did make me realize that many of her compatriots might also think our site was full of errors. American English is more common on the web and I've since learned to cater to that trend. I try to remember that in all writing I do for the web now, whether it's in my daily blog, the syndicated articles I write regularly or web page content.
Whenever you design or write for a web site that has an international audience, make sure you address each market. It pays to undertake detailed keyword research into your markets you are targeting so you can capture the correct regional jargon and spelling that people are searching for. Remember it's not enough to think global, you've got to act global too.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
When you write web site content and design your pages, do you truly act with your target audience in mind? Or do you think global and act local?
I am amazed at the number of web sites I see that claim to target a global market, yet design and write their content for a regionally-specific audience. Not sure what I mean? Take the site I saw yesterday, for example. I won't embarrass the site owners by pointing to the specific domain, but let's just say the site is based in the U.S. and sells high quality gold chains throughout North America, Europe and Australia.
Now the owner of this site was complaining loudly in a webmaster forum that his pay-per-click campaign was having no luck converting sales from overseas visitors, particularly in the UK and Australia. He had spent a long time developing and tweaking a landing page for the campaign and he couldn't work out why hardly anyone outside the U.S. was buying. I took a look at his landing page and could see the problems straight away:
1) He used the American English spelling "jewelry" throughout the page without considering that persons who use British English spell it "jewellery".
2) He provided a toll-free phone number for persons in the U.S. to call, but did not provide any contact phone number for persons located outside the U.S.
3) He used the word "national" throughout the page, immediately isolating anyone outside the U.S.
4) He promoted "free shipping throughout the U.S." but did not specify shipping costs for persons outside the U.S.
The owner of this site had not even considered that persons outside the U.S. might search for keywords in anything other than American English. It didn't even occur to him that there may be an alternative spelling of his main keyword and he didn't think about the logistics for purchasers outside his country. No wonder the page wasn't converting outside the U.S.! He had made the classic mistake of isolating a large chunk of his audience by sending everyone to a one-size-fits-some page.
What he should have done was to create a separate landing page using British English spelling and shipping/contact information applicable to persons overseas. He could then have set up a unique PPC campaign targeting only UK/Australian searchers with regional keywords and ads leading to the British English landing page.
I see similar problems occur quite often in the online travel industry where you not only have to deal with regional spelling options, but also regional jargon. Think about the word "accommodation". Apart from the fact the word is commonly misspelled, it is used most often in the UK, Australia and New Zealand to describe places to stay while traveling. In the U.S., the words "accommodations" and "lodging" are more commonly used. Same goes for "holiday" and "vacation", with the latter being more common in the U.S. The word "traveling" itself is spelled "travelling" in British English! So you can imagine the minefield of problems webmasters must face promoting their travel sites online to a worldwide audience.
I don't mean to single out a particular country, but Americans seem to find it especially difficult to step outside their regional mindset. I am always receiving emails from the U.S. with helpful suggestions for fixing my "spelling mistakes".
The funniest email exchange I ever had in relation to this was from an American web designer. She had seen our Australian-based web site (with a .com.au domain) and emailed me to tell me it was "full of errors" and that if I wanted to present a professional business to site visitors, I should correct them. So condescending! I asked her to elaborate and she pointed me to these words she felt were spelled incorrectly:
optimisation
counselling
organised
enrolment
colour
catalogue
favourite
centre
Resisting the urge to use a few offensive words I'm sure she would recognize, I tactfully explained that our site was only targeting the Australian market and that we use British English spelling in Australia. Her response? Perhaps if we wanted to be taken seriously by an international audience, we should consider using the "more proper" American English. Flabbergasted, I pointed out the fact that American English was a derivative of British English and was not widely used outside her own country. Wikipedia has more about the differences between the two here. And let’s not forget that although it is the most common language used on the web, English is used by less than 30 percent of the world’s total Internet users.
The point of this story is that you absolutely have to think outside your market if you are going to advertise on the web. As ignorant as she was, my email friend did make me realize that many of her compatriots might also think our site was full of errors. American English is more common on the web and I've since learned to cater to that trend. I try to remember that in all writing I do for the web now, whether it's in my daily blog, the syndicated articles I write regularly or web page content.
Whenever you design or write for a web site that has an international audience, make sure you address each market. It pays to undertake detailed keyword research into your markets you are targeting so you can capture the correct regional jargon and spelling that people are searching for. Remember it's not enough to think global, you've got to act global too.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Website inside
Does your website need a workout?
Here's an analogy for you. Yesterday, I was working my butt off in the gym on the cardio machines, panting wildly with sweat dripping off me and my face as red as a beet. Not the most attractive sight, but I figure, you're at the gym to work out right? I might as well "go hard" or "go home", as they say.
As I looked around me, I could see all these people simply going through the motions. There they were, minus perspiration in their shiny new lycra and expensive gym shoes, casually walking on the treadmill or lazily turning the wheels on a bike while reading a book or glued to the TV screens in front of them. Only a few seemed to be there for the actual purpose of working out. The rest seemed to be there to check out the talent or to simply keep up the appearance of fitness, while doing the bare minimum.
Huh? I don't get it. Why have these gym bimbos paid so much money for a gym membership and all the related gear if they aren't going to take full advantage of their investment?
Then it struck me - these gymbos were just like those companies who spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles like graphic design, blogs, shopping carts, web analytics, the lot and then fail to take advantage of it. I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking visitor activity, analyzing trends or checking for search engine compatibility and usability.
These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are doing the same. But no thought has gone into the search engine compatibility of the site, how usable it is for visitors or whether it meets accessibility guidelines. They don't look at their site statistics, they don't check for broken links and they sure as heck don't investigate why their sites aren't converting traffic into customers. What a waste!
Is your web site working hard enough for you? Run it through the following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:
Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?
Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do you use the information provided by your visitor statistics to improve your site?
Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors? Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)?
Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic? Do you use this information to increase your traffic further?
Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?
Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimize for them?
Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards? Do you check for validation regularly?
Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for and fix broken links regularly?
Has your site been fully search engine optimized to integrate your target search terms into your Page Titles, META Tags and visible page text?
Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps?
Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer?
Have you checked to see if your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines?
Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to increase the conversion rates?
Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors following the navigation paths you intended?
Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?
Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?
Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site's link popularity score?
Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute?
Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures grow each month?
Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and needs a workout. Get to it!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Here's an analogy for you. Yesterday, I was working my butt off in the gym on the cardio machines, panting wildly with sweat dripping off me and my face as red as a beet. Not the most attractive sight, but I figure, you're at the gym to work out right? I might as well "go hard" or "go home", as they say.
As I looked around me, I could see all these people simply going through the motions. There they were, minus perspiration in their shiny new lycra and expensive gym shoes, casually walking on the treadmill or lazily turning the wheels on a bike while reading a book or glued to the TV screens in front of them. Only a few seemed to be there for the actual purpose of working out. The rest seemed to be there to check out the talent or to simply keep up the appearance of fitness, while doing the bare minimum.
Huh? I don't get it. Why have these gym bimbos paid so much money for a gym membership and all the related gear if they aren't going to take full advantage of their investment?
Then it struck me - these gymbos were just like those companies who spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles like graphic design, blogs, shopping carts, web analytics, the lot and then fail to take advantage of it. I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking visitor activity, analyzing trends or checking for search engine compatibility and usability.
These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are doing the same. But no thought has gone into the search engine compatibility of the site, how usable it is for visitors or whether it meets accessibility guidelines. They don't look at their site statistics, they don't check for broken links and they sure as heck don't investigate why their sites aren't converting traffic into customers. What a waste!
Is your web site working hard enough for you? Run it through the following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:
Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?
Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do you use the information provided by your visitor statistics to improve your site?
Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors? Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)?
Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic? Do you use this information to increase your traffic further?
Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?
Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimize for them?
Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards? Do you check for validation regularly?
Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for and fix broken links regularly?
Has your site been fully search engine optimized to integrate your target search terms into your Page Titles, META Tags and visible page text?
Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps?
Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer?
Have you checked to see if your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines?
Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to increase the conversion rates?
Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors following the navigation paths you intended?
Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?
Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?
Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site's link popularity score?
Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute?
Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures grow each month?
Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and needs a workout. Get to it!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Before Optimizing Your Site
One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.
Before You Start
Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it’s for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:
1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.
2) What is the time-frame for this project?
3) What is the budget for this project?
4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?
Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.
Get Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?
Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.
I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.
Get Set: Requirements Gathering
Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client’s exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.
To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:
1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)
2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)
3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing “?†symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).
4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?
5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?
6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?
7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps?
8) What is the current link popularity of the site?
9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?
10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?
11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?
12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)
13) What are the site’s geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?
14) What are the site’s demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)
15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client’s target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?
16) Who are my/my client’s major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?
17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?
18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?
19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client’s conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?
20) What are my/my client’s expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?
Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you’ll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.
This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.
The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.
For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.
Go!
So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You’re ready to tackle the job!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Before You Start
Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it’s for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:
1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.
2) What is the time-frame for this project?
3) What is the budget for this project?
4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?
Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.
Get Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?
Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.
I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.
Get Set: Requirements Gathering
Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client’s exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.
To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:
1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)
2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)
3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing “?†symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).
4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?
5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?
6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?
7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps?
8) What is the current link popularity of the site?
9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?
10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?
11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?
12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)
13) What are the site’s geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?
14) What are the site’s demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)
15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client’s target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?
16) Who are my/my client’s major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?
17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?
18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?
19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client’s conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?
20) What are my/my client’s expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?
Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you’ll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.
This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.
The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.
For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.
Go!
So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You’re ready to tackle the job!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Consider a job
11 Reasons to consider a job in Search Engine Marketing
Are you currently seeking employment? Looking for a new profession? Considering a career change? Then a job in the field of Search Engine Marketing should be at the top of your list. Here are 10 reasons why:
1) The Search Industry is HOT
The first dot-com bubble may have burst 6 years ago, but the current bubble is getting bigger and stronger every day. One of the main reasons for the current dot-com boom is the skyrocketing growth of the search engine industry. No longer the territory of geekdom, search has exploded into the mainstream over the past few years and businesses are falling over themselves to get seen by online searchers. And they'll pay big bucks to search engines for the privilege.
Have you noticed that Google shares recently hit USD 500 EACH? It's not a coincidence. Search giants like Google, Yahoo and AOL can't fail to make money because everybody wants a bit of the search action. There's no denying it, search is HOT, HOT, HOT.
2) It's Considered one of Four Jobs on the Cutting Edge
According to a recent article on MSN Careers, the position of Search Engine Optimizer is considered one of four jobs on the cutting edge right now. Who gave it this title? A representative from the world's largest specialized recruitment firm - Robert Half International Inc.
Search Engine Optimization is considered a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing. If you're unsure what a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) does, below is a definition provided by MSN Careers:
"Search engine optimizers (SEOs) increase a firm's Web site traffic by improving its search-engine page rankings. This is an especially important task in today's Internet-driven world, where many customers first learn of an organization and its products or services through the Web. Because of a shortage of experts in this relatively new area, many top SEOs receive multiple job offers. SEOs typically supplement their knowledge of how various search engines operate and determine
page rankings with strong marketing skills, as well as the ability to communicate effectively and program using HTML."
Wikipedia also defines Search Engine Optimizers here.
3) The Pay is Fantastic
A job in the search industry can be unbelievably lucrative. As noted recently by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide, "There are quite literally more jobs than there are skilled marketers and salaries can skyrocket to almost embarrassing levels."
Have you seen the type of salaries that search engine marketing and search engine optimization consultants are currently commanding in the US? Clearly, the search industry is making some people rich. Here are some typical salaries in USD:
Entry level SEO/SEM position = $30-45K
Three to five years experience / online account managers =
$50-75K
Five + years / organic SEO specialists = $75-90K
Senior management level = $70-120K
SEM Director = $95-150K
VP Level = $100-315K
Additional Salary links:
From ClickZ
From Search Engine Watch Forums
4) You Don't Need a College Degree
Because the search industry is relatively young, there are only a handful of online courses and certifications offered in the field of Search Engine Marketing (Search Engine College being one such training provider).
Most search engine marketing practitioners are self-taught, learning the trade by experimenting with their own sites, researching trends, attending conferences and participating in discussion forums and so employers don't generally require SEO / SEM certification or a tertiary qualification as a pre-requisite for a position in the industry.
However, candidates who hold a marketing degree or specific industry certification in Search Engine Marketing may well have an edge over their fellow applicants when it comes to interview selection.
5) You Can Learn it all Online
Everything you need to know to become a Search Engine Marketer, you can learn online. All the information is out there, you just have to find it. To become an expert in SEO / SEM, you need to do research, research and more research. Read everything you can get your hands on relating to search on a daily basis, including articles, forums, ebooks, blogs and newsfeeds. Then you need to put this knowledge into practice by experimenting with your own sites, or finding guinea pig sites to practice on such as those of friends, family or charity sites until you find the methods that give you the best results. Programming knowledge is not a pre-requisite for SEO / SEM jobs, but it does help to learn basic HTML. There are plenty of free HTML tutorials online.
If you don't fancy years of research or are in a hurry to jump-start your career in search, consider taking an online Certification course in one of the many Search Engine Marketing disciplines such as the Certification Pathways provided by Search Engine College. These type of courses are usually tutor-led and designed to fast-track your training and ensure you gain the right type of skills to make you immediately employable within the search industry.
6) You Can Be Your Own Boss
Because most of the work you'll be doing is online, Search Engine Optimizers and Search Engine Marketers often have the freedom of choice to work for an employer, work from home and/or freelance. Many SEO / SEM freelancers end up hiring workers and starting their own company due to the massive demand. This gives search engine marketing experts the work from home lifestyle that others can only dream of.
7) Search Marketing Has the WOW Factor
Once they know what they're doing, it's very easy for a Search Engine Marketer to wow their clients. The difference that a successful SEO or PPC campaign can make to a client's bottom line is substantial. I've seen online conversion rates for a client zoom from 1% to a massive 5% after just two small tweaks to their web site. And although rankings are not as important as actual conversions, clients still get very excited to see their site listed in the top 10 search results for certain keywords. It's the WOW factor in action.
8) The Demand is Strong and Growing
As mentioned in relation to search engine salaries, there are literally many more jobs than there are skilled marketers to fill them. This extreme demand means Search Engine Marketers can pick and choose their jobs and/or clients. The more skilled marketers are head-hunted regularly. For Search Engine Optimization firms, there are more than enough clients to go around and rarely a need to advertise for new business. That's why you often find SEOs turning away clients or recommending their competitors during extremely busy periods.
Experts in select specialties such as Pay Per Click Advertising (a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing) are currently enjoying even higher demand than usual, as advertisers out-bid each other to have their site shown for popular keyword searches on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Another indicator of high demand is the sheer number of search-related job postings seen on employment sites such as those listed here.
9) The Industry is Hip and Groovy
There's something very trendy about people in search that I can't quite put my finger on. There's a constant buzz around them. If you've ever been to a search engine conference or to Google's headquarters you'll know what I mean. Maybe it's the fact that they've come from so many different professions. Or that the age range of search marketers varies from teens to Baby Boomers. Or their whacky dress sense.
Maybe it's the smell of money and happiness that they give off. Maybe it's the fact that they are constantly in the media. I don't know. All I know is that it's no longer uncool to be a geek. In fact it's downright hip to be square.
10) The Skills Are Portable and Global
Skills in search engine marketing are portable and global. You don't need to be at a desk, in an office or on the phone all day. You don't even need to meet your clients. Of all my clients, I've probably only met 20 percent of them and spoken to half of them on the phone or via chat. You can be on vacation for six months out of the year in various locations and still conduct business. You literally only need a computer and an Internet connection. The Internet is the universal equalizer. You can service clients in any country in the world, in many different languages. You can compete with one man operations and Fortune 500 companies on the same level playing field. The flexibility of the search industry is a huge advantage over other career options.
Have laptop, will travel!
11) Job Satisfaction is High
Search is a fascinating industry. With all the hype, daily gossip, corporate take-overs, start-ups and geek toys, I can guarantee that you won't get bored. This combined with the flexible work hours, low start-up costs, ability to be your own boss and the excellent income keeps job satisfaction high for Search Engine Marketers.
So what are you waiting for? Go get a job in search!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Are you currently seeking employment? Looking for a new profession? Considering a career change? Then a job in the field of Search Engine Marketing should be at the top of your list. Here are 10 reasons why:
1) The Search Industry is HOT
The first dot-com bubble may have burst 6 years ago, but the current bubble is getting bigger and stronger every day. One of the main reasons for the current dot-com boom is the skyrocketing growth of the search engine industry. No longer the territory of geekdom, search has exploded into the mainstream over the past few years and businesses are falling over themselves to get seen by online searchers. And they'll pay big bucks to search engines for the privilege.
Have you noticed that Google shares recently hit USD 500 EACH? It's not a coincidence. Search giants like Google, Yahoo and AOL can't fail to make money because everybody wants a bit of the search action. There's no denying it, search is HOT, HOT, HOT.
2) It's Considered one of Four Jobs on the Cutting Edge
According to a recent article on MSN Careers, the position of Search Engine Optimizer is considered one of four jobs on the cutting edge right now. Who gave it this title? A representative from the world's largest specialized recruitment firm - Robert Half International Inc.
Search Engine Optimization is considered a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing. If you're unsure what a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) does, below is a definition provided by MSN Careers:
"Search engine optimizers (SEOs) increase a firm's Web site traffic by improving its search-engine page rankings. This is an especially important task in today's Internet-driven world, where many customers first learn of an organization and its products or services through the Web. Because of a shortage of experts in this relatively new area, many top SEOs receive multiple job offers. SEOs typically supplement their knowledge of how various search engines operate and determine
page rankings with strong marketing skills, as well as the ability to communicate effectively and program using HTML."
Wikipedia also defines Search Engine Optimizers here.
3) The Pay is Fantastic
A job in the search industry can be unbelievably lucrative. As noted recently by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide, "There are quite literally more jobs than there are skilled marketers and salaries can skyrocket to almost embarrassing levels."
Have you seen the type of salaries that search engine marketing and search engine optimization consultants are currently commanding in the US? Clearly, the search industry is making some people rich. Here are some typical salaries in USD:
Entry level SEO/SEM position = $30-45K
Three to five years experience / online account managers =
$50-75K
Five + years / organic SEO specialists = $75-90K
Senior management level = $70-120K
SEM Director = $95-150K
VP Level = $100-315K
Additional Salary links:
From ClickZ
From Search Engine Watch Forums
4) You Don't Need a College Degree
Because the search industry is relatively young, there are only a handful of online courses and certifications offered in the field of Search Engine Marketing (Search Engine College being one such training provider).
Most search engine marketing practitioners are self-taught, learning the trade by experimenting with their own sites, researching trends, attending conferences and participating in discussion forums and so employers don't generally require SEO / SEM certification or a tertiary qualification as a pre-requisite for a position in the industry.
However, candidates who hold a marketing degree or specific industry certification in Search Engine Marketing may well have an edge over their fellow applicants when it comes to interview selection.
5) You Can Learn it all Online
Everything you need to know to become a Search Engine Marketer, you can learn online. All the information is out there, you just have to find it. To become an expert in SEO / SEM, you need to do research, research and more research. Read everything you can get your hands on relating to search on a daily basis, including articles, forums, ebooks, blogs and newsfeeds. Then you need to put this knowledge into practice by experimenting with your own sites, or finding guinea pig sites to practice on such as those of friends, family or charity sites until you find the methods that give you the best results. Programming knowledge is not a pre-requisite for SEO / SEM jobs, but it does help to learn basic HTML. There are plenty of free HTML tutorials online.
If you don't fancy years of research or are in a hurry to jump-start your career in search, consider taking an online Certification course in one of the many Search Engine Marketing disciplines such as the Certification Pathways provided by Search Engine College. These type of courses are usually tutor-led and designed to fast-track your training and ensure you gain the right type of skills to make you immediately employable within the search industry.
6) You Can Be Your Own Boss
Because most of the work you'll be doing is online, Search Engine Optimizers and Search Engine Marketers often have the freedom of choice to work for an employer, work from home and/or freelance. Many SEO / SEM freelancers end up hiring workers and starting their own company due to the massive demand. This gives search engine marketing experts the work from home lifestyle that others can only dream of.
7) Search Marketing Has the WOW Factor
Once they know what they're doing, it's very easy for a Search Engine Marketer to wow their clients. The difference that a successful SEO or PPC campaign can make to a client's bottom line is substantial. I've seen online conversion rates for a client zoom from 1% to a massive 5% after just two small tweaks to their web site. And although rankings are not as important as actual conversions, clients still get very excited to see their site listed in the top 10 search results for certain keywords. It's the WOW factor in action.
8) The Demand is Strong and Growing
As mentioned in relation to search engine salaries, there are literally many more jobs than there are skilled marketers to fill them. This extreme demand means Search Engine Marketers can pick and choose their jobs and/or clients. The more skilled marketers are head-hunted regularly. For Search Engine Optimization firms, there are more than enough clients to go around and rarely a need to advertise for new business. That's why you often find SEOs turning away clients or recommending their competitors during extremely busy periods.
Experts in select specialties such as Pay Per Click Advertising (a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing) are currently enjoying even higher demand than usual, as advertisers out-bid each other to have their site shown for popular keyword searches on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Another indicator of high demand is the sheer number of search-related job postings seen on employment sites such as those listed here.
9) The Industry is Hip and Groovy
There's something very trendy about people in search that I can't quite put my finger on. There's a constant buzz around them. If you've ever been to a search engine conference or to Google's headquarters you'll know what I mean. Maybe it's the fact that they've come from so many different professions. Or that the age range of search marketers varies from teens to Baby Boomers. Or their whacky dress sense.
Maybe it's the smell of money and happiness that they give off. Maybe it's the fact that they are constantly in the media. I don't know. All I know is that it's no longer uncool to be a geek. In fact it's downright hip to be square.
10) The Skills Are Portable and Global
Skills in search engine marketing are portable and global. You don't need to be at a desk, in an office or on the phone all day. You don't even need to meet your clients. Of all my clients, I've probably only met 20 percent of them and spoken to half of them on the phone or via chat. You can be on vacation for six months out of the year in various locations and still conduct business. You literally only need a computer and an Internet connection. The Internet is the universal equalizer. You can service clients in any country in the world, in many different languages. You can compete with one man operations and Fortune 500 companies on the same level playing field. The flexibility of the search industry is a huge advantage over other career options.
Have laptop, will travel!
11) Job Satisfaction is High
Search is a fascinating industry. With all the hype, daily gossip, corporate take-overs, start-ups and geek toys, I can guarantee that you won't get bored. This combined with the flexible work hours, low start-up costs, ability to be your own boss and the excellent income keeps job satisfaction high for Search Engine Marketers.
So what are you waiting for? Go get a job in search!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Search Engines Steps
How to Make Search Engines Happy in 3 Easy Steps
Does your web site make search engines happy? Despite all the negative hype lately, it's pretty easy to design a web site that search engines will accept with open arms. All it takes is 3 easy steps:
1) Follow the Search Engine Guidelines
Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be "spam". They also published SEO Guidelines - advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.
It's not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You'll find them at the following search engine sites as well:
- MSN Search webmaster guidelines
- AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
- Yahoo terms of service
- Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
- Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
- Yahoo content guidelines
- AskJeeves / Teoma terms of service and spam policy
- AskJeeves / Teoma editorial guidelines
2) Avoid Spamming the Search Engines
Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site's rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner's knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn't use any of the latest methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.
Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Does your web site make search engines happy? Despite all the negative hype lately, it's pretty easy to design a web site that search engines will accept with open arms. All it takes is 3 easy steps:
1) Follow the Search Engine Guidelines
Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be "spam". They also published SEO Guidelines - advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.
It's not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You'll find them at the following search engine sites as well:
- MSN Search webmaster guidelines
- AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
- Yahoo terms of service
- Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
- Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
- Yahoo content guidelines
- AskJeeves / Teoma terms of service and spam policy
- AskJeeves / Teoma editorial guidelines
2) Avoid Spamming the Search Engines
Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site's rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner's knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn't use any of the latest methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.
Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Saturday, September 29, 2007
10 AdSense Tricks
Top 10 AdSense Tricks To Boost Your Commission
Google AdSense is fast becoming the preferred way for people to earn an income online. Forget eBay and multiple affiliate programs - Whether you are a work-at-home mom trying to make a little extra cash or an Internet entrepreneur with hundreds of monetized websites, AdSense is truly the easiest way to earn money.
Simply sign up for a free account, grab your ad code and paste it in your site. But here's the amazing thing - no matter how much money AdSense is making for you right now, a few simple tweaks can increase that amount considerably. And I should know, after learning about these tricks, I more than doubled my AdSense commissions!
The self-proclaimed AdSense gurus and experts are sharing this insider knowledge, for a fee. You can learn all these secrets from them, as long as you buy their e-book, sign up for their seminar or purchase their newsletter. But I'm going to share all their AdSense tricks for free. Here they are:
1) Color code your ads to match your web site palette *exactly*. Don't use frames around your ads. Instead, in the AdSense code generation interface, make sure you choose the same color as your page background for the ad frame and the ad background.
When choosing the ad heading colors, match them to the *exact* color of your page headings. Use the exact same ad background shade as your page background. Use the exact same ad text font and color as the text on your pages. You can see an example of this color-matching on my search engine advice blog - notice the 4 link ad unit and skyscraper text ad unit on the left hand side under the headings Ads by Google as you scroll down the page? The link and text colors are identical to the color palette used throughout the rest of the page.
Near enough is NOT good enough. If you can't quite get the color matching right, use Google's built in color palette together with the RGB to HEX or vice versa color converter on this page. That handy little tool was a life saver for me.
This is probably the one single tweak that made the most difference to my commission levels.
2) Try not to use the traditional horizontal banner style or leaderboard image ads because people are blind to them.
3) Use Google's own AdSense optimization tips and visual heat map to assist you in deciding where on your page to place your AdSense ad code.
4) Research competitive keywords using a keyword research tool such as Keyword Discovery or grab a list of the most popular keywords from various sources and use them in your web site pages where relevant. This article is a good source of frequently searched keywords. Targeting popular keywords should trigger AdSense ads on your pages that utilize those keywords. The more popular the keyword or phrase, the higher AdWords advertisers are generally willing to pay per click for it so the higher your commission on those clicks.
5) Incorporate the AdSense code into your page so that the ads look like a regular part of your site. You can see an example of this on the Internet Dating Stories site where link ads are incorporated within the regular left hand navigation of the site under the heading "Sponsor Links".
6) Use Google's new 4 and 5 link ad units wherever possible. They seem to have a much higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than regular ad styles. You can view all the AdSense ad formats here.
7) Place images next to your ads to attract the eyes. You can see this in place on the search engine article library page at the bottom where 3 images draw your attention to the bottom of the page. But be careful here - the use of arrows or symbols enticing viewers to click are NOT allowed by Google and publishers may NOT label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements".
8) Use the full allowance of multiple AdSense ads on each of your pages - 3 regular AdSense ads, plus 1 link unit. Use careful placement of these ads so they blend into your site and don't distract from your content. Clever use of this allowance can be seen on this page about bad Internet dating stories where you see:
- 1 horizontal 4 link ad unit towards the top of the page under the first paragraph
- 1 vertical skyscraper text ad unit about halfway down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links"
- 1 vertical skyscraper image ad unit down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links"
- 1 horizontal text banner unit at the bottom of the page with images above each ad.
You can also include 1 AdSense referral button in addition to the 3 other units.
9) Tailor your page content to a particular niche or focus. Page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is more likely to trigger AdWords ads that closely match the content and are therefore more likely to interest your visitors and inspire them to click. Don’t create pages merely for the sake of placing AdSense ads. Visitors (and search engines) can see through this ruse in an instant.
10) Use custom Ad Channels for each of your ad placements, for example, "Top 5 Link Unit Blue Palette" or "Left Side Navigation Image Skyscraper" etc. Tweak, track and measure the success of each of these custom channels so you know what gives you the highest CTR. Some ad formats and colors will work better than others, but you won't know which until you test, test and test some more!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Google AdSense is fast becoming the preferred way for people to earn an income online. Forget eBay and multiple affiliate programs - Whether you are a work-at-home mom trying to make a little extra cash or an Internet entrepreneur with hundreds of monetized websites, AdSense is truly the easiest way to earn money.
Simply sign up for a free account, grab your ad code and paste it in your site. But here's the amazing thing - no matter how much money AdSense is making for you right now, a few simple tweaks can increase that amount considerably. And I should know, after learning about these tricks, I more than doubled my AdSense commissions!
The self-proclaimed AdSense gurus and experts are sharing this insider knowledge, for a fee. You can learn all these secrets from them, as long as you buy their e-book, sign up for their seminar or purchase their newsletter. But I'm going to share all their AdSense tricks for free. Here they are:
1) Color code your ads to match your web site palette *exactly*. Don't use frames around your ads. Instead, in the AdSense code generation interface, make sure you choose the same color as your page background for the ad frame and the ad background.
When choosing the ad heading colors, match them to the *exact* color of your page headings. Use the exact same ad background shade as your page background. Use the exact same ad text font and color as the text on your pages. You can see an example of this color-matching on my search engine advice blog - notice the 4 link ad unit and skyscraper text ad unit on the left hand side under the headings Ads by Google as you scroll down the page? The link and text colors are identical to the color palette used throughout the rest of the page.
Near enough is NOT good enough. If you can't quite get the color matching right, use Google's built in color palette together with the RGB to HEX or vice versa color converter on this page. That handy little tool was a life saver for me.
This is probably the one single tweak that made the most difference to my commission levels.
2) Try not to use the traditional horizontal banner style or leaderboard image ads because people are blind to them.
3) Use Google's own AdSense optimization tips and visual heat map to assist you in deciding where on your page to place your AdSense ad code.
4) Research competitive keywords using a keyword research tool such as Keyword Discovery or grab a list of the most popular keywords from various sources and use them in your web site pages where relevant. This article is a good source of frequently searched keywords. Targeting popular keywords should trigger AdSense ads on your pages that utilize those keywords. The more popular the keyword or phrase, the higher AdWords advertisers are generally willing to pay per click for it so the higher your commission on those clicks.
5) Incorporate the AdSense code into your page so that the ads look like a regular part of your site. You can see an example of this on the Internet Dating Stories site where link ads are incorporated within the regular left hand navigation of the site under the heading "Sponsor Links".
6) Use Google's new 4 and 5 link ad units wherever possible. They seem to have a much higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than regular ad styles. You can view all the AdSense ad formats here.
7) Place images next to your ads to attract the eyes. You can see this in place on the search engine article library page at the bottom where 3 images draw your attention to the bottom of the page. But be careful here - the use of arrows or symbols enticing viewers to click are NOT allowed by Google and publishers may NOT label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements".
8) Use the full allowance of multiple AdSense ads on each of your pages - 3 regular AdSense ads, plus 1 link unit. Use careful placement of these ads so they blend into your site and don't distract from your content. Clever use of this allowance can be seen on this page about bad Internet dating stories where you see:
- 1 horizontal 4 link ad unit towards the top of the page under the first paragraph
- 1 vertical skyscraper text ad unit about halfway down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links"
- 1 vertical skyscraper image ad unit down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links"
- 1 horizontal text banner unit at the bottom of the page with images above each ad.
You can also include 1 AdSense referral button in addition to the 3 other units.
9) Tailor your page content to a particular niche or focus. Page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is more likely to trigger AdWords ads that closely match the content and are therefore more likely to interest your visitors and inspire them to click. Don’t create pages merely for the sake of placing AdSense ads. Visitors (and search engines) can see through this ruse in an instant.
10) Use custom Ad Channels for each of your ad placements, for example, "Top 5 Link Unit Blue Palette" or "Left Side Navigation Image Skyscraper" etc. Tweak, track and measure the success of each of these custom channels so you know what gives you the highest CTR. Some ad formats and colors will work better than others, but you won't know which until you test, test and test some more!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Google Adwords Tips
How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords
Like many people who earn their income via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income. One of the affiliate products I promote (Proposal Kit) had been performing particularly well for me recently and I decided to help things along by creating a Google AdWords campaign based around my reviews of the product.
After one month, the campaign was going ok, I was getting a few sales here and there and certainly making a good ROI on the promotion. However, although my Click Through Rate (CTR) was pretty good (1.2%), it was starting to slide backwards and I thought I could do better. As you probably know, your ad position in Google relies heavily on your CTR compared to your competitors, so I was keen to turn things around and keep my high ad positions.
Around this time, I bought Nick Usborne's book Net Words and started to read it, taking notes as I went. I realized that according to Nick's philosophy, my AdWords ads were flat and boring. They were just not appealing enough to entice people to click on them. As Nick explains in his book, "Being blah guarantees you'll never be heard".
So I set about re-writing some of my ad text to speak more directly to my audience and ask them a question that required a response. Below is an example of an ad targeting the search query "business proposal before I changed the text:
Business Proposal Kit
Close the sale with a professional
business proposal template kit.
And here is the text I replaced it with:
Need a business proposal?
Create your own professional
proposal with our template kit.
The aim was to get my average CTR for the entire campaign up to around 2% from the existing 1.2% it was sitting at.
I logged off for the evening and went to bed, not expecting too much. The next morning, I had messages in my email in-box advising me that I had made 3 sales overnight! I was quite excited and logged into AdWords to see how things were going. Sure enough, my clicks were way up and two of the three AdGroups I had edited were showing an average 33% CTR! My overall campaign CTR had risen from 1.2% to 2.4%. I had never experienced CTR that high before. The ad I had changed used to show a 2.5% CTR and after a few days the changed ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.
Taking note of the ads that had attracted the most clicks, I created more around related keywords and phrases, using similar headlines to the ads that were performing the best. This time, I incorporated Nick's advice to use short and punchy copy.
Below is an example of an ad I was using to target the search query "seo contract" before I changed the text:
Sample SEO contract
Proposal Kit provides a perfect SEO
contract template. Read our review.
And here is the text I replaced it with:
Need an SEO contract?
Create yours.
Today.
After another week, my average CTR for the whole campaign jumped from 2.4% to 4% and I had a couple of ads showing 100% CTR! You can imagine how excited I was. Of course the high CTR builds on itself because the higher your CTR, the higher your ad position and the higher your ad position, the more clicks it is likely to attract. So my campaign had jumped from 1.3% in the first month, to 2.4% in the second month and after my fine-tuning, it's now showing a 4% CTR consistently. And the sales? Well I now average at least seven sales per week, up from two per week over the past 6 months and my affiliate commission is at an all time record.
The exercise just goes to show that a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line. So what are you waiting for? Go tweak that copy in your own campaigns...
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Like many people who earn their income via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income. One of the affiliate products I promote (Proposal Kit) had been performing particularly well for me recently and I decided to help things along by creating a Google AdWords campaign based around my reviews of the product.
After one month, the campaign was going ok, I was getting a few sales here and there and certainly making a good ROI on the promotion. However, although my Click Through Rate (CTR) was pretty good (1.2%), it was starting to slide backwards and I thought I could do better. As you probably know, your ad position in Google relies heavily on your CTR compared to your competitors, so I was keen to turn things around and keep my high ad positions.
Around this time, I bought Nick Usborne's book Net Words and started to read it, taking notes as I went. I realized that according to Nick's philosophy, my AdWords ads were flat and boring. They were just not appealing enough to entice people to click on them. As Nick explains in his book, "Being blah guarantees you'll never be heard".
So I set about re-writing some of my ad text to speak more directly to my audience and ask them a question that required a response. Below is an example of an ad targeting the search query "business proposal before I changed the text:
Business Proposal Kit
Close the sale with a professional
business proposal template kit.
And here is the text I replaced it with:
Need a business proposal?
Create your own professional
proposal with our template kit.
The aim was to get my average CTR for the entire campaign up to around 2% from the existing 1.2% it was sitting at.
I logged off for the evening and went to bed, not expecting too much. The next morning, I had messages in my email in-box advising me that I had made 3 sales overnight! I was quite excited and logged into AdWords to see how things were going. Sure enough, my clicks were way up and two of the three AdGroups I had edited were showing an average 33% CTR! My overall campaign CTR had risen from 1.2% to 2.4%. I had never experienced CTR that high before. The ad I had changed used to show a 2.5% CTR and after a few days the changed ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.
Taking note of the ads that had attracted the most clicks, I created more around related keywords and phrases, using similar headlines to the ads that were performing the best. This time, I incorporated Nick's advice to use short and punchy copy.
Below is an example of an ad I was using to target the search query "seo contract" before I changed the text:
Sample SEO contract
Proposal Kit provides a perfect SEO
contract template. Read our review.
And here is the text I replaced it with:
Need an SEO contract?
Create yours.
Today.
After another week, my average CTR for the whole campaign jumped from 2.4% to 4% and I had a couple of ads showing 100% CTR! You can imagine how excited I was. Of course the high CTR builds on itself because the higher your CTR, the higher your ad position and the higher your ad position, the more clicks it is likely to attract. So my campaign had jumped from 1.3% in the first month, to 2.4% in the second month and after my fine-tuning, it's now showing a 4% CTR consistently. And the sales? Well I now average at least seven sales per week, up from two per week over the past 6 months and my affiliate commission is at an all time record.
The exercise just goes to show that a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line. So what are you waiting for? Go tweak that copy in your own campaigns...
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Pay Per Click Guide2
Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the various pay for performance advertising models offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing. In this article, we will look at the remaining pay for performance search engine models on our list, starting with Google AdWords.
Google AdWords
Similar to Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Google AdWords gives web site owners the ability to promote their site when particular keyword or key phrase searches are conducted at Google and their partner sites.
Your ads usually appear on the right side of results pages in a call out box under the heading Sponsored Links. Your AdWords text or image ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country.
With Google AdWords cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. Google adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the lowest possible price. Google Adwords results appear on Google search results pages, Google’s distribution partner sites, Google Gmail, and numerous content sites which are syndicated through the Google Adsense program.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a way for webmasters to generate income from their sites by displaying text or image advertisements from companies participating in the Google AdWords program.
You can display targeted advertising for your content pages or you can add a Google search box to your site and show targeted ads on search results pages. When visitors click on these ads, Google pays you a fee. The ads are targeted to the content already on your page so they are not as intrusive to your visitors.
LookSmart LookListings
The LookSmart Directory originally offered a Paid Submission model and then transformed it into a Pay For Performance model, removing their Express Submit directory submission service and receiving a lot of criticism in the process.
To have your site included in LookSmart.com, you must pay a per click fee when visitors click on your listing, similar to the Yahoo! Search Submit Express model. The relevancy keywords, title and description chosen during the set up of your listing determine when your site appears for searches.
There is no free submission option to Looksmart and the only way to get your site into their directory is to either pay for their LookListings or submit your site via the Zeal Directory, which is only an option available to non-profit sites.
LookSmart LookListings work like this:
1) Create Your Listing which includes:
- site description & title
- relevancy keywords (for keyword targeted listings)
- directory category
2) Set Your Monthly Budget:
- set your maximum monthly budget
- set your maximum click rates for each URL (for keyword targeted listings)
- your account is debited USD 0.15 per click (for inclusion-targeted listings)
- minimum account deposit totaling your maximum monthly budget
- each campaign has a minimum monthly budget of USD 15
3) Account Management
- traffic reporting
- automatic monthly account refills (from your nominated credit card)
- adjust your budget
- update description, title and relevancy keywords
- bids monitored automatically (for keyword targeted listings)
LookListings appear on sites across the LookSmart Network including LookSmart, Lycos, Mamma.com and CNET Search.
Other Pay-Per-Click Providers
Apart from the big players, there are a large number of other medium-sized search providers selling pay-per-click search advertising. These include:
- FindWhat
- Enhance (formerly ah-ha)
- Kanoodle
- Espotting
- 7Search
- GoClick
- ePilot.com
- Lycos Insite AdBuyer
- Search123
Of course there are hundreds more PPC engines, many of which can be found via the sites listed in our Further Reading section below.
Don’t be afraid to set-up some test pay per click campaigns to dip your toes into the paid advertising waters. You don’t have to have a large budget to reap rewards, just a willingness to experiment and apply what you learn to improve your campaigns. What you do with all your extra traffic is up to you!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the various pay for performance advertising models offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing. In this article, we will look at the remaining pay for performance search engine models on our list, starting with Google AdWords.
Google AdWords
Similar to Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Google AdWords gives web site owners the ability to promote their site when particular keyword or key phrase searches are conducted at Google and their partner sites.
Your ads usually appear on the right side of results pages in a call out box under the heading Sponsored Links. Your AdWords text or image ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country.
With Google AdWords cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. Google adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the lowest possible price. Google Adwords results appear on Google search results pages, Google’s distribution partner sites, Google Gmail, and numerous content sites which are syndicated through the Google Adsense program.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a way for webmasters to generate income from their sites by displaying text or image advertisements from companies participating in the Google AdWords program.
You can display targeted advertising for your content pages or you can add a Google search box to your site and show targeted ads on search results pages. When visitors click on these ads, Google pays you a fee. The ads are targeted to the content already on your page so they are not as intrusive to your visitors.
LookSmart LookListings
The LookSmart Directory originally offered a Paid Submission model and then transformed it into a Pay For Performance model, removing their Express Submit directory submission service and receiving a lot of criticism in the process.
To have your site included in LookSmart.com, you must pay a per click fee when visitors click on your listing, similar to the Yahoo! Search Submit Express model. The relevancy keywords, title and description chosen during the set up of your listing determine when your site appears for searches.
There is no free submission option to Looksmart and the only way to get your site into their directory is to either pay for their LookListings or submit your site via the Zeal Directory, which is only an option available to non-profit sites.
LookSmart LookListings work like this:
1) Create Your Listing which includes:
- site description & title
- relevancy keywords (for keyword targeted listings)
- directory category
2) Set Your Monthly Budget:
- set your maximum monthly budget
- set your maximum click rates for each URL (for keyword targeted listings)
- your account is debited USD 0.15 per click (for inclusion-targeted listings)
- minimum account deposit totaling your maximum monthly budget
- each campaign has a minimum monthly budget of USD 15
3) Account Management
- traffic reporting
- automatic monthly account refills (from your nominated credit card)
- adjust your budget
- update description, title and relevancy keywords
- bids monitored automatically (for keyword targeted listings)
LookListings appear on sites across the LookSmart Network including LookSmart, Lycos, Mamma.com and CNET Search.
Other Pay-Per-Click Providers
Apart from the big players, there are a large number of other medium-sized search providers selling pay-per-click search advertising. These include:
- FindWhat
- Enhance (formerly ah-ha)
- Kanoodle
- Espotting
- 7Search
- GoClick
- ePilot.com
- Lycos Insite AdBuyer
- Search123
Of course there are hundreds more PPC engines, many of which can be found via the sites listed in our Further Reading section below.
Don’t be afraid to set-up some test pay per click campaigns to dip your toes into the paid advertising waters. You don’t have to have a large budget to reap rewards, just a willingness to experiment and apply what you learn to improve your campaigns. What you do with all your extra traffic is up to you!
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Pay Per Click Guide
Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines (Part 1)
Pay per click (PPC) advertising via search engines has become extremely popular with businesses of all sizes, due to the booming search market and the massive growth in online sales over the past few years.
According to ComScore Networks, online consumer spending for the 2004/5 financial year is expected to top USD 66 billion dollars, up 25% on the previous year. That’s right, 66 BILLION dollars! A large chunk of that expenditure will come from leads generated via pay per click search engines.
If you've been thinking about trying out PPC engines but are confused about the different models available and the costs involved, this article will shed some light. I will also explain the newly launched PPC products offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly operating under the Overture brand).
Below is a current list of the most popular pay for performance search engine advertising models:
> Yahoo! Sponsored Search (Pay Per Click)
> Yahoo! Content Match (Pay Per Click)
> Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search (Pay Per Click)
> Yahoo! Search Submit Express (Paid Inclusion)
> Yahoo! Search Submit Pro (Hybrid Paid Inclusion / Pay Per Click)
> Google AdWords (Pay Per Click)
> Google AdSense (Pay Per Click affiliate program)
> Looksmart LookListings (Pay Per Click)
You will find that some of these will provide better results than others. I'm not going to recommend one over another here because results vary widely and really depend on your site content, your market and your budget. But below is a brief description of each product offering and the minimum cost involved.
Yahoo! Sponsored Search
Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the new name for what was recently called Overture Precision Match. Sponsored Search prominently displays your business in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties.
With Sponsored Search, you set the price you're willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing.
If you create a keyword campaign and your bid buys their "premium listings" (top 3 positions) for particular keywords or search phrases, your bid buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites (Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace, Excite, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as CNN).
For example, go to AllTheWeb and type in a search for used cars. Take note of the top 3 spots. Now go to MSN Search and type in a search for used cars. You'll see that the "Sponsored Sites" listings in the green box at the top (and/or the text ads to the right) contain the same top 3 listings from AllTheWeb. The regular MSN directory listings follow underneath the green box. So basically, purchasing PPC listings on Yahoo! can give you top billing on other major search engines too.
For a monthly fee, listings can be automatically monitored using the Yahoo! Search Optimizer to ensure bid amounts are consistent to attain target positions without going over budget. Volume levels are determined by your budget, as you only pay for the traffic delivered.
How much you pay depends on the keyword or phrase you are bidding on and what position you want to purchase. Each account has a USD20 minimum monthly spend and a USD30 non-refundable initial deposit is required to open the account (which is applied to click-throughs). There is a minimum bid requirement of USD 0.10 per click through and you pay the bid price EACH TIME somebody clicks your ad from Yahoo! and their partner listings.
With the large traffic numbers driven to your site via Yahoo! Sponsored Search, the costs of keyword bid campaigns can quickly add up, so I highly recommend deciding on a total budget so that you can develop a cost effective keyword bid allocation and maintenance plan combining both premium (top 3) and other listings.
Yahoo! provides detailed reporting tools to help you track the performance of the PPC campaign and traffic generated. Yahoo! also offers a special Keyword Selector Tool to assist in the selection of your keywords, a View Bids Tool, where you can see the current maximum bids and listings for the top 3 advertisers on any search term, a PPC ROI Calculator and a CPM ROI Calculator.
Yahoo! offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track or Self Serve, giving you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. With Fast Track, Yahoo! experts research your website and recommend effective search terms based on the content of your site and Yahoo!'s editorial guidelines. They also create customized ad titles and descriptions based on those search terms. Fast Track has a one time service fee of USD199, while Self Serve is free.
Yahoo! Content Match
Content Match works on the same principle Yahoo! Sponsored Search, but offers advertisers access to more targeted customers on a pay-per-click basis by displaying their site listings alongside related articles, product reviews and other information on the Content Match partner network.
This network includes sites like Yahoo!, MSN.com, CNN.com and ESPN.com. Yahoo! Content Match complements Sponsored Search while offering separate pricing.
Yahoo! Content Match works like this:
1) When you sign up for Sponsored Search, your Yahoo! account will be set up to automatically receive Content Match traffic, and your listings are automatically re-purposed for Content Match.
2) When a web user goes to a Yahoo! and views content pages (such as articles), Yahoo! provides one or more relevant ad listings on the same page.
3) Users may also be targeted based on their interests and actions. For example, a user who demonstrates an interest in photography-related topics on one site may be provided with photography-related Content Match listings on that site or on other Content Match publisher sites such as CNN and ESPN.
4) Minimum bids start at USD 0.10, and you pay only when a user clicks on your listing.
5) You can manage and track the performance of your Content Match listings from the Manage Content Match pages in your Sponsored Search Account once you have completed the Sponsored Search advertiser sign-up process.
6) Separate campaign management, including bidding, ad listing and tracking, lets you adjust your bids and measure performance independent of Sponsored Search to achieve maximum ROI.
7) You can control your advertising spend across your Content Match campaigns with Yahoo's Budgeting feature.
Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search
Yahoo! also offers a regionally-focused pay-per-click advertising option. Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search enables both online and offline businesses to potentially increase sales by precisely targeting customers in a specific geographic region.
Local Sponsored Search works best for businesses that are targeting customers in their neighborhood seeking to purchase local products and services via a web site or physical store location.
Local Sponsored Search features a Locator page, which provides prospects with information about your business, including address, phone number, store hours and a map of your location. In addition, if your business has a Web site, your main Web page will be displayed along with the Locator page.
Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search works like this:
1) You select keywords you wish to bid on that best describe your business, products or services. Write listings and choose a geographic range (0.5 to 100 mile radius around your location) from which you want to draw customers.
2) When a customer interested in your area goes to a search site such as Yahoo! and searches for a product or service you sell, your listing appears.
3) When the customer clicks on your listing, they see your Locator page and a link to your Web site, if you have a site.
4) Just like your Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search listing, you only pay your bidded amount when a customer clicks on your listing and there is no monthly minimum.
Yahoo Search Submit Express
Through Search Submit Express you can submit one or more web pages for consideration to appear in the algorithmic search results powered by the Yahoo! search engine. This is what is known in the search industry as a paid inclusion model.
Search Submit Express offers a single point of submission for your web pages into Yahoo!, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and other search portals.
If you have content that has just changed or is updated frequently (such as pricing information or product items), Search Submit Express ensures the most up-to-date content is available to search users by refreshing your URLs every 48 hours.
The program provides detailed reporting and data designed to help you improve your pages, optimize program performance and generate more leads.
Search Submit Express works like this:
1) Submit your URLs for review and pay an annual fee for quality review of your submitted pages. Make sure your pages follow Yahoo's Quality Guidelines.
2) Once reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are added to a database of sites that powers search results for major web portals such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.
3) Submitted URLs are presented in search results based on relevance to search terms.
4) When a user clicks your Search Submit Express listing in search results, you pay a cost-per-click fee for that lead. You must maintain a positive balance in your account for your pages to remain active in the program.
5) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every 48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content is available to search users.
6) At the end of one year, you can renew your annual subscription or let it lapse.
Submissions to Search Submit Express consist of a review fee and a CPC (Cost per click) component. Billing, reporting and account management for Search Submit Express listings is provided by Yahoo! or one of their reseller partners.
Search Submit Express annual review fees consist of:
Price Structure (effective 30 April 05)
Price per domain (USD):
1st URL $49.00 each
URLs 2-10 $29.00 each
URLs 11-1,000 $10.00 each
In addition to the review fee, there is also a per click fee of either $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the category of the content. The complete list of categories is listed here.
Yahoo Search Submit Pro
Yahoo! Search Submit Pro is the same paid inclusion program as Search Submit Express, but with more features for larger advertisers. Search Submit Pro is designed for companies wanting to submit Web pages that might otherwise be excluded from algorithmic search results (as long as they still meet Yahoo's Content Quality Guidelines). Examples include sites that require cookies or session IDs, sites with Flash content and information stored in content management systems, or sites that aren't well crawled because of Web site design.
Search Submit Pro is typically for customers with search marketing budgets of USD 5,000 per month or more, or advertisers who submit more than 1,000 Web pages to the program. A dedicated account manager is available to answer any questions, provide technical support, and help you manage your Search Submit Pro program.
Search Submit Pro lets you create titles and descriptions that are displayed as algorithmic search result listings. The program can automatically generate result listings that best match user queries. You can update the information frequently, independent of changes to your Web site.
Search Submit Pro works like this:
1) You provide an XML feed of your URLs.
2) Once reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are added to a database of sites that powers search results for major web portals such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.
3) When Internet users visit the Search Submit Pro partner sites and enter keyword searches, your listings may appear within the search results based on their relevance to the user's search request.
4) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every 48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content is available to search users.
Pricing for Search Submit Pro is based on cost per click - customers are charged each time a user clicks on one of the customer's search listings. The specific cost is based on the type and category of content provided for inclusion in the algorithmic search results and is obtainable from a Yahoo! Account Manager.
In Part 2 of this article, we look at the remaining pay for performance search engine models on our list, starting with Google AdWords.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Pay per click (PPC) advertising via search engines has become extremely popular with businesses of all sizes, due to the booming search market and the massive growth in online sales over the past few years.
According to ComScore Networks, online consumer spending for the 2004/5 financial year is expected to top USD 66 billion dollars, up 25% on the previous year. That’s right, 66 BILLION dollars! A large chunk of that expenditure will come from leads generated via pay per click search engines.
If you've been thinking about trying out PPC engines but are confused about the different models available and the costs involved, this article will shed some light. I will also explain the newly launched PPC products offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly operating under the Overture brand).
Below is a current list of the most popular pay for performance search engine advertising models:
> Yahoo! Sponsored Search (Pay Per Click)
> Yahoo! Content Match (Pay Per Click)
> Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search (Pay Per Click)
> Yahoo! Search Submit Express (Paid Inclusion)
> Yahoo! Search Submit Pro (Hybrid Paid Inclusion / Pay Per Click)
> Google AdWords (Pay Per Click)
> Google AdSense (Pay Per Click affiliate program)
> Looksmart LookListings (Pay Per Click)
You will find that some of these will provide better results than others. I'm not going to recommend one over another here because results vary widely and really depend on your site content, your market and your budget. But below is a brief description of each product offering and the minimum cost involved.
Yahoo! Sponsored Search
Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the new name for what was recently called Overture Precision Match. Sponsored Search prominently displays your business in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties.
With Sponsored Search, you set the price you're willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing.
If you create a keyword campaign and your bid buys their "premium listings" (top 3 positions) for particular keywords or search phrases, your bid buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites (Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace, Excite, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as CNN).
For example, go to AllTheWeb and type in a search for used cars. Take note of the top 3 spots. Now go to MSN Search and type in a search for used cars. You'll see that the "Sponsored Sites" listings in the green box at the top (and/or the text ads to the right) contain the same top 3 listings from AllTheWeb. The regular MSN directory listings follow underneath the green box. So basically, purchasing PPC listings on Yahoo! can give you top billing on other major search engines too.
For a monthly fee, listings can be automatically monitored using the Yahoo! Search Optimizer to ensure bid amounts are consistent to attain target positions without going over budget. Volume levels are determined by your budget, as you only pay for the traffic delivered.
How much you pay depends on the keyword or phrase you are bidding on and what position you want to purchase. Each account has a USD20 minimum monthly spend and a USD30 non-refundable initial deposit is required to open the account (which is applied to click-throughs). There is a minimum bid requirement of USD 0.10 per click through and you pay the bid price EACH TIME somebody clicks your ad from Yahoo! and their partner listings.
With the large traffic numbers driven to your site via Yahoo! Sponsored Search, the costs of keyword bid campaigns can quickly add up, so I highly recommend deciding on a total budget so that you can develop a cost effective keyword bid allocation and maintenance plan combining both premium (top 3) and other listings.
Yahoo! provides detailed reporting tools to help you track the performance of the PPC campaign and traffic generated. Yahoo! also offers a special Keyword Selector Tool to assist in the selection of your keywords, a View Bids Tool, where you can see the current maximum bids and listings for the top 3 advertisers on any search term, a PPC ROI Calculator and a CPM ROI Calculator.
Yahoo! offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track or Self Serve, giving you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. With Fast Track, Yahoo! experts research your website and recommend effective search terms based on the content of your site and Yahoo!'s editorial guidelines. They also create customized ad titles and descriptions based on those search terms. Fast Track has a one time service fee of USD199, while Self Serve is free.
Yahoo! Content Match
Content Match works on the same principle Yahoo! Sponsored Search, but offers advertisers access to more targeted customers on a pay-per-click basis by displaying their site listings alongside related articles, product reviews and other information on the Content Match partner network.
This network includes sites like Yahoo!, MSN.com, CNN.com and ESPN.com. Yahoo! Content Match complements Sponsored Search while offering separate pricing.
Yahoo! Content Match works like this:
1) When you sign up for Sponsored Search, your Yahoo! account will be set up to automatically receive Content Match traffic, and your listings are automatically re-purposed for Content Match.
2) When a web user goes to a Yahoo! and views content pages (such as articles), Yahoo! provides one or more relevant ad listings on the same page.
3) Users may also be targeted based on their interests and actions. For example, a user who demonstrates an interest in photography-related topics on one site may be provided with photography-related Content Match listings on that site or on other Content Match publisher sites such as CNN and ESPN.
4) Minimum bids start at USD 0.10, and you pay only when a user clicks on your listing.
5) You can manage and track the performance of your Content Match listings from the Manage Content Match pages in your Sponsored Search Account once you have completed the Sponsored Search advertiser sign-up process.
6) Separate campaign management, including bidding, ad listing and tracking, lets you adjust your bids and measure performance independent of Sponsored Search to achieve maximum ROI.
7) You can control your advertising spend across your Content Match campaigns with Yahoo's Budgeting feature.
Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search
Yahoo! also offers a regionally-focused pay-per-click advertising option. Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search enables both online and offline businesses to potentially increase sales by precisely targeting customers in a specific geographic region.
Local Sponsored Search works best for businesses that are targeting customers in their neighborhood seeking to purchase local products and services via a web site or physical store location.
Local Sponsored Search features a Locator page, which provides prospects with information about your business, including address, phone number, store hours and a map of your location. In addition, if your business has a Web site, your main Web page will be displayed along with the Locator page.
Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search works like this:
1) You select keywords you wish to bid on that best describe your business, products or services. Write listings and choose a geographic range (0.5 to 100 mile radius around your location) from which you want to draw customers.
2) When a customer interested in your area goes to a search site such as Yahoo! and searches for a product or service you sell, your listing appears.
3) When the customer clicks on your listing, they see your Locator page and a link to your Web site, if you have a site.
4) Just like your Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search listing, you only pay your bidded amount when a customer clicks on your listing and there is no monthly minimum.
Yahoo Search Submit Express
Through Search Submit Express you can submit one or more web pages for consideration to appear in the algorithmic search results powered by the Yahoo! search engine. This is what is known in the search industry as a paid inclusion model.
Search Submit Express offers a single point of submission for your web pages into Yahoo!, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and other search portals.
If you have content that has just changed or is updated frequently (such as pricing information or product items), Search Submit Express ensures the most up-to-date content is available to search users by refreshing your URLs every 48 hours.
The program provides detailed reporting and data designed to help you improve your pages, optimize program performance and generate more leads.
Search Submit Express works like this:
1) Submit your URLs for review and pay an annual fee for quality review of your submitted pages. Make sure your pages follow Yahoo's Quality Guidelines.
2) Once reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are added to a database of sites that powers search results for major web portals such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.
3) Submitted URLs are presented in search results based on relevance to search terms.
4) When a user clicks your Search Submit Express listing in search results, you pay a cost-per-click fee for that lead. You must maintain a positive balance in your account for your pages to remain active in the program.
5) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every 48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content is available to search users.
6) At the end of one year, you can renew your annual subscription or let it lapse.
Submissions to Search Submit Express consist of a review fee and a CPC (Cost per click) component. Billing, reporting and account management for Search Submit Express listings is provided by Yahoo! or one of their reseller partners.
Search Submit Express annual review fees consist of:
Price Structure (effective 30 April 05)
Price per domain (USD):
1st URL $49.00 each
URLs 2-10 $29.00 each
URLs 11-1,000 $10.00 each
In addition to the review fee, there is also a per click fee of either $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the category of the content. The complete list of categories is listed here.
Yahoo Search Submit Pro
Yahoo! Search Submit Pro is the same paid inclusion program as Search Submit Express, but with more features for larger advertisers. Search Submit Pro is designed for companies wanting to submit Web pages that might otherwise be excluded from algorithmic search results (as long as they still meet Yahoo's Content Quality Guidelines). Examples include sites that require cookies or session IDs, sites with Flash content and information stored in content management systems, or sites that aren't well crawled because of Web site design.
Search Submit Pro is typically for customers with search marketing budgets of USD 5,000 per month or more, or advertisers who submit more than 1,000 Web pages to the program. A dedicated account manager is available to answer any questions, provide technical support, and help you manage your Search Submit Pro program.
Search Submit Pro lets you create titles and descriptions that are displayed as algorithmic search result listings. The program can automatically generate result listings that best match user queries. You can update the information frequently, independent of changes to your Web site.
Search Submit Pro works like this:
1) You provide an XML feed of your URLs.
2) Once reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are added to a database of sites that powers search results for major web portals such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.
3) When Internet users visit the Search Submit Pro partner sites and enter keyword searches, your listings may appear within the search results based on their relevance to the user's search request.
4) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every 48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content is available to search users.
Pricing for Search Submit Pro is based on cost per click - customers are charged each time a user clicks on one of the customer's search listings. The specific cost is based on the type and category of content provided for inclusion in the algorithmic search results and is obtainable from a Yahoo! Account Manager.
In Part 2 of this article, we look at the remaining pay for performance search engine models on our list, starting with Google AdWords.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Submit To Directories
How to Submit Your Site To Directories
Unlike submitting to search engines, submitting your site to directories and niche portals usually involves a lot more than simply typing in your URL. You often have to start by researching the various topic categories to find the most appropriate area to submit to. Then you generally have to provide some detailed information about your site, its’ content, your company and your contact details.
When selecting the most appropriate Directory category to submit your site to, conduct a search for your main keyword phrase and view the various related categories. Study the sites listed within these categories and choose the category that is the most relevant to or closely related to your site content. Some directories like ODP have specific Category Descriptions you should read before submitting, to ensure you have chosen the most relevant topic for your site.
Another way to choose your category is to search for sites belonging to your direct competitors. It is likely that the category they are listed in will be the most relevant to your site.
If your site targets or discusses a specific regional market, you will need to submit to a regional category. For example, if my site was about rental cars for hire in Sydney, Australia, I would need to submit it to this regional Yahoo category and not this general Yahoo rental car category.
I find it useful to submit a slightly different description of my client’s sites for each directory submission. That way, I can gauge which descriptions are more effective in terms of encouraging people to click and also which directories are providing my clients with the most traffic. Many directories feed their database results to other engines and directories, so if I have a description unique to each directory and I see that description pop up on other search sites, I know it is the result of that original directory submission and immediately recognize the value of that original submission.
Remember that directory editors don’t care about your site’s ranking in their search results. If they are reviewing a site submission that contains an obviously keyword stuffed title and description, they are unlikely to find it appealing or beneficial for inclusion in their database! Always make sure your submission details are relevant, interesting and accurate. Try to highlight your site’s benefits for the visitor and unique content that makes it stand out from others in the same category. If your site sounds just like a cookie-cutter version of others of the same topic, there is no incentive for the editor to include it.
Submitting to the Yahoo! Directory
There are a couple of sites where you want to take extreme care and do advance research when submitting your site. One of these is the Yahoo! Directory. The way you submit your site to Yahoo! can make or break your site’s ultimate ranking in the Directory and if you’re not careful, could also cost you USD 299 for nothing.
With Yahoo!’s huge market share and popularity worldwide, I believe it’s vital that your site is listed in Yahoo!’s Directory. The best way to get listed quickly is by paying the fee for Express Submission. Yahoo! Express is an expedited fee-based site suggestion service for web sites submitted to the Yahoo! directory. A member of Yahoo!'s editorial staff will look at your site, consider your suggestion and respond to you within 7 business days. Important: Payment does not guarantee inclusion in the directory, site placement, or site commentary. It only guarantees that Yahoo! will respond to your suggestion within seven business days, by either adding or denying the site.
The secret to obtaining excellent results via your Yahoo! submission is to choose the most appropriate category and include a carefully-crafted description that contains your main keyword phrase/s without being too verbose. For those of you offering a Yahoo! submission service to clients, be sure to charge a generous admin fee for your expertise in researching the category and writing the description for your client – a successful Yahoo submission can pay dividends for your client for years.
Example of a successful site description for Yahoo!:
ABC VIP Adventures - offers tailored adventure travel and vacation packages to New Zealand including day tours, exotic corporate trips, luxury travel packages, kite surfing, and extreme sports.
Example of an unsuccessful site description for Yahoo!:
ABC Travel – we are the best! We are the only company to contact for your vacation. Call now!
The latter does not use the actual company name, plus it contains lots of hype but no keywords and few clues as to what the site is about. In this case, the Yahoo! editor would have to visit the site submitted and come up with their own description and it’s doubtful the edited description will be something the submitter would be happy with.
Submitting to Open Directory
Another Directory where submission is critical is the Open Directory. DMOZ is run entirely by volunteers and your site submission must be hand-reviewed by one of these volunteers before it can be considered for inclusion. DMOZ is extremely under-staffed (I know this because I’m a DMOZ editor!) and it can take 6 or more months before your submission is reviewed – you must be patient. When submitting to DMOZ, make sure you follow the directory submission guidelines above and prepare to wait, wait and wait some more.
Procedure to follow for a successful DMOZ Submission:
1) Submit site
2) wait for 3 months
3) follow up email to category editor
4) wait for 3 months
5) escalation email to category editor above your category
6) wait for 3 months
7) ask for assistance in the Open Directory Public Forum
8) wait for 1 month
9) escalation email to DMOZ senior staff & post to various forums seeking help (last resort only)
10) Assume your submission is not relevant for DMOZ inclusion and move on!
Rules of Submission
1) Do it once: Despite the hype, there is NEVER a need to resubmit to a search engine or directory unless your site is dropped entirely (which is a very rare occurrence).
2) Do it properly: Be very thorough when submitting, especially to directories. Take the time to research and locate the most appropriate category for your site.
3) Be brief: Don’t waffle on about your site in the description field. Get to the point and describe your site in a short sentence or two.
4) Be accurate: Don’t try to trick potential visitors by using vague or misleading descriptions about your products or services.
5) Be relevant: There is a fine line to tread between relevance and keyword optimization when creating your site descriptions for submissions. Try not to cross it by using descriptions over-stuffed with keywords.
6) Be humble: “Best Web Site in the World!!!!†is not going to convince anyone and may earn you the wrath of search engine editors.
7) Be patient: Search engines and directories can take up to 6 months to index and list your site. Re-submitting won’t help things and could result in your site being shoved to the bottom of the review pile.
So that wraps up the directory submission process. It can be time consuming, but taking a little bit of time and care with your submissions can pay dividends for your site for years to come.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
Unlike submitting to search engines, submitting your site to directories and niche portals usually involves a lot more than simply typing in your URL. You often have to start by researching the various topic categories to find the most appropriate area to submit to. Then you generally have to provide some detailed information about your site, its’ content, your company and your contact details.
When selecting the most appropriate Directory category to submit your site to, conduct a search for your main keyword phrase and view the various related categories. Study the sites listed within these categories and choose the category that is the most relevant to or closely related to your site content. Some directories like ODP have specific Category Descriptions you should read before submitting, to ensure you have chosen the most relevant topic for your site.
Another way to choose your category is to search for sites belonging to your direct competitors. It is likely that the category they are listed in will be the most relevant to your site.
If your site targets or discusses a specific regional market, you will need to submit to a regional category. For example, if my site was about rental cars for hire in Sydney, Australia, I would need to submit it to this regional Yahoo category and not this general Yahoo rental car category.
I find it useful to submit a slightly different description of my client’s sites for each directory submission. That way, I can gauge which descriptions are more effective in terms of encouraging people to click and also which directories are providing my clients with the most traffic. Many directories feed their database results to other engines and directories, so if I have a description unique to each directory and I see that description pop up on other search sites, I know it is the result of that original directory submission and immediately recognize the value of that original submission.
Remember that directory editors don’t care about your site’s ranking in their search results. If they are reviewing a site submission that contains an obviously keyword stuffed title and description, they are unlikely to find it appealing or beneficial for inclusion in their database! Always make sure your submission details are relevant, interesting and accurate. Try to highlight your site’s benefits for the visitor and unique content that makes it stand out from others in the same category. If your site sounds just like a cookie-cutter version of others of the same topic, there is no incentive for the editor to include it.
Submitting to the Yahoo! Directory
There are a couple of sites where you want to take extreme care and do advance research when submitting your site. One of these is the Yahoo! Directory. The way you submit your site to Yahoo! can make or break your site’s ultimate ranking in the Directory and if you’re not careful, could also cost you USD 299 for nothing.
With Yahoo!’s huge market share and popularity worldwide, I believe it’s vital that your site is listed in Yahoo!’s Directory. The best way to get listed quickly is by paying the fee for Express Submission. Yahoo! Express is an expedited fee-based site suggestion service for web sites submitted to the Yahoo! directory. A member of Yahoo!'s editorial staff will look at your site, consider your suggestion and respond to you within 7 business days. Important: Payment does not guarantee inclusion in the directory, site placement, or site commentary. It only guarantees that Yahoo! will respond to your suggestion within seven business days, by either adding or denying the site.
The secret to obtaining excellent results via your Yahoo! submission is to choose the most appropriate category and include a carefully-crafted description that contains your main keyword phrase/s without being too verbose. For those of you offering a Yahoo! submission service to clients, be sure to charge a generous admin fee for your expertise in researching the category and writing the description for your client – a successful Yahoo submission can pay dividends for your client for years.
Example of a successful site description for Yahoo!:
ABC VIP Adventures - offers tailored adventure travel and vacation packages to New Zealand including day tours, exotic corporate trips, luxury travel packages, kite surfing, and extreme sports.
Example of an unsuccessful site description for Yahoo!:
ABC Travel – we are the best! We are the only company to contact for your vacation. Call now!
The latter does not use the actual company name, plus it contains lots of hype but no keywords and few clues as to what the site is about. In this case, the Yahoo! editor would have to visit the site submitted and come up with their own description and it’s doubtful the edited description will be something the submitter would be happy with.
Submitting to Open Directory
Another Directory where submission is critical is the Open Directory. DMOZ is run entirely by volunteers and your site submission must be hand-reviewed by one of these volunteers before it can be considered for inclusion. DMOZ is extremely under-staffed (I know this because I’m a DMOZ editor!) and it can take 6 or more months before your submission is reviewed – you must be patient. When submitting to DMOZ, make sure you follow the directory submission guidelines above and prepare to wait, wait and wait some more.
Procedure to follow for a successful DMOZ Submission:
1) Submit site
2) wait for 3 months
3) follow up email to category editor
4) wait for 3 months
5) escalation email to category editor above your category
6) wait for 3 months
7) ask for assistance in the Open Directory Public Forum
8) wait for 1 month
9) escalation email to DMOZ senior staff & post to various forums seeking help (last resort only)
10) Assume your submission is not relevant for DMOZ inclusion and move on!
Rules of Submission
1) Do it once: Despite the hype, there is NEVER a need to resubmit to a search engine or directory unless your site is dropped entirely (which is a very rare occurrence).
2) Do it properly: Be very thorough when submitting, especially to directories. Take the time to research and locate the most appropriate category for your site.
3) Be brief: Don’t waffle on about your site in the description field. Get to the point and describe your site in a short sentence or two.
4) Be accurate: Don’t try to trick potential visitors by using vague or misleading descriptions about your products or services.
5) Be relevant: There is a fine line to tread between relevance and keyword optimization when creating your site descriptions for submissions. Try not to cross it by using descriptions over-stuffed with keywords.
6) Be humble: “Best Web Site in the World!!!!†is not going to convince anyone and may earn you the wrath of search engine editors.
7) Be patient: Search engines and directories can take up to 6 months to index and list your site. Re-submitting won’t help things and could result in your site being shoved to the bottom of the review pile.
So that wraps up the directory submission process. It can be time consuming, but taking a little bit of time and care with your submissions can pay dividends for your site for years to come.
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank.Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization expertsin Australasia and is well known and respected in her field.For more of her articles on search engine ranking and onlinemarketing, please visit high-search-engine-ranking.com
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