Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’
How To: Prep Your Small Business Web Site for the Holidays
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Back in October, more than 44 percent of consumers said they planned to purchase holiday gifts online, according to a National Retail Federation survey. After all, the Internet provides convenience without crowds, not to mention a great number of gifting possibilities.
But so many options for consumers could bring too much competition for small business owners – that is, unless they properly prepare their Web site for the holiday season. Not only must they provide a reason to shop, but they must also promote that reason extensively.
Small business owners should first create a list a keywords that will lead customers toward their holiday specials, whether they are particular products or special sales. These can be placed anywhere on the Web site for optimization, and in a number of forms: with pictures as alt tags, embedded in the Web site coding under meta tags, or simply included in a written blurb.
Regardless of what they are, returning and even prospective customers will always be drawn to something new, said Maria Perilli, online marketing manager for Deep Blue Interactive , a web design and Internet marketing company. Furthermore, “the more content you have on your page, the more your Web site is promoted on the search engine,” she said.
For a richer shopping experience, online retailers now have improved site searches, customer review features, and product videos. JCPenney’s Web site has all of this, while also highlighting limited-time offers. Small business owners can do this, or even create a separate page for longer-term deals.
Such microsites, like Best Buy’s Project Holiday , can also demonstrate how company products can lend to unique gift-giving. If the holiday budget permits, small business owners can even take one step further and create a pay-per-click campaign for that page, Perilli said.
As for the main web site, what should also be prominently displayed is “a call to action” – a phone number, e-mail address, or even a link to a contact form, whatever prompts more than just browsing. As for the rest of the shopping process, small business owners should first obtain, then display an updated security certificate.
“Customers are not going to buy anything on a unsecured site that’s taking credit cards,” said Matt Warnock, creative director and producer at Daisy Interactive .
Small business owners should update shipping and handling information periodically – making fees and expected delivery times extremely clear. “They need to be concerned with orders getting out in a timely fashion, especially since customers can get so panicky about getting their Christmas gifts,” Warnock said.
Finally – no matter how they may choose to update their Web sites this season – small business owners must aim to provide a shopping experience as personalized as customers may find in brick-and-mortar storefronts.
“Make sure you put your message out as much as possible … making sure the customers feel happy and positive about shopping,” Warnock said.
Tags: Best Buy, christina lee, Daisy Interactive, Deep Blue Interactive, holiday shopping, JCPenney, Maria Perilli, Matt Warnock, national retail federation, online marketing, search engine optimization
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Small Business Resource Review: IBP SEO Tool
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
One of the most important factors in any business’s success is the visibility they have to their potential customers, especially online. Whereas local newspaper and trade magazine advertising is a little easier due to the format only allowing a certain amount of advertising space, online advertising is a different story altogether. With thousands of competitors, your business will disappear unless you have a strong presence.
Once of the ways of doing this is by using Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. This is a multi-faceted process where your website is optimized with keywords related to your business, therefore pushing you up the natural search rankings with Google and other search engines. The higher placed you are, the more visible you’ll become to people looking for your type of company. However, unless you’re an SEO expert, you’d normally have to hire a specialist company to run your SEO campaign for you, and this can run into thousands of dollars, which is a lot to pay if you’re a small to medium business. Thankfully, there’s an answer that will allow you to get strong results yourself.
The IBP Internet Business Promoter ($449.95 for the Business Edition) is a key tool for any small business that needs to increase its online presence. Easy to use, and hugely effective, it allows you a number of useful ways to increase your Google ranking and track your performance as well, to ensure that you’re keeping up to date with any changes that Google or other search engines make to the way your website is indexed and ranked.
Currently in its 10th incarnation, some of the key features that the IBP software includes are:
* Search engine submission to all the major search engines as well as thousands of smaller ones
* Keyword analysis, helping you use the most effective keywords for promoting your business and website online
* Top 10 ranking optimization
* Link popularity builder
* Search engine ranking checker
These features and numerous more are similar to the ones that SEO specialists use to help you climb the rankings on Google, and stay there. For a fraction of the price, however, you can now do this yourself, and the good news is that it’s relatively straightforward.
For example, the Top 10 ranking optimizer is an excellent tool that actually trawls the Internet and gets the keywords and descriptions that your competitors are using to attain their high placement with Google. All you do is set up a project for your website, type in the keywords for the audience you’re looking for, and set the program running. It will find the Top 10 websites on Google or your preferred search engine with these keywords, and show you how these companies are using them. You simply take the best ones and implement them on your own site.
Using this software has seen users appear on the first page of Google when searching for their particular niche. And with the tracking as well as performance tools, you can make sure that once you’re on the first page, you’ll stay there. One thing you do need to know, however, is that SEO is not something you do once and forget it. It’s a continual process and will not yield results overnight, or even in a week or two. IBP may get you started, but you can’t just stuff keywords into your site’s text and expect a number one ranking. Your visitors come first - so design and optimize your site for them first, and then for the search engines.
One of the downsides to the IBP software is that is doesn’t really allow for multiple search engine optimization - the changes you make to your website are for the search engine you set the project up with. So, if you optimize for Google, you’ll probably not receive the same results for Yahoo or MSN. But with Google being the dominant search engine anyway, it’s not that big a problem.
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, search engine optimization, SEO tools, Small Business Resources, small business tools
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Making Your Blog Posts Count
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Running a blog is a way of business these days. Blogs help bring customers in to read your posts - and has them stay to see what your business has to offer.
In a perfect world, the posts on your blog would come up in search engine listings or be linked to other blogs - and a flood of people would read your words, become interested in you and your product and then make a purchase from your business.
But making this perfect world come to life takes some work.
Here are some tips to making your blogs more valuable and more attractive to your readers:
1. Interest Over Items - While you want to reel in potential customers and have them rush to your site to make a purchase, the way to do this is not to flood your blog with information about your items. This is going to bore and turn off the casual reader.
Blog readers want to find something interesting and valuable to them. If you are selling jewelry , you could have a blog about the newest jewelry trends or what the stars were wearing at the award shows. Then you can have a link to one of your items that is similar to a necklace being worn by one of the big stars.
Your items should be downplayed, while the big focus is on the stuff that is interesting to the masses.
2. Offer Valuable Information - Want to really get readers to visit your website? Skip talking about your products. Instead, be helpful. If you have a website that deals with hair care products, your blog should not be pushing your latest items, but should instead deal with things that are important to people working with and using hair care products.
You could talk about a problem a client had and then give the play-by-play of how to fix it. If one person had the problem, chances are there are plenty of others out there with it, too. When people with a problem go to a search engine looking for an answer to their question, and your blog comes up, you will be the person who helped them out and will gain their immediate loyalty.
3. Think Like A Searcher - Instead of thinking like a seller, you need to think like the people you want to have visit your website (your potential customers). People who are looking for your particular products are probably going to find you when they do a search. You want to get the people who don’t know exactly what they are looking for, but know what kind of help they need.
By building blogs with helpful information, and filling it with keywords that relate to your industry, people will stumble into the blog, then onto your products.
Remember, blogging is not about direct sales . It is instead an indirect sales program. Instead of titles like “Why Company X Hair Spray is The Best”, think of more all-encompassing titles like “The Top 5 Ways to Have Movie Star Hair” (blog readers love lists).
You will be able to bring in a more broad audience, educate them on how to get what they want, and then subtly let them know you have the items that can help them do it.
Tags: advice, blogging, blogs, E-Commerce and E-Business, Leeia Ladipoh, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, tips
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Content Marketing
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
So you’ve got your web page squared away. It’s up and running and you’ve been getting decent traffic. But now you want to start getting noticed more. The best way to do this is to either hire a Search Engine Optimizer or invest some time and resources into learning yourself.
Once you’ve got the basics down, you’ll inevitably need to start focusing on the content of your pages. Content is crucial for anyone trying to increase their organic search results. While there are many books on the topic (and more coming as SEO evolves) the internet is also a great place to get tips and advice. One fairly comprehensive website is called Content Marketing Today .
This website offers basic content marketing information for both on and offline businesses as well as book recommendations, news, a knowledge center and a helpful links section. I recommend you check this site out if you get stuck with your current content situation or if you don’t even know where to start!
Tags: Content Marketing Today, E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing Your Business, online content marketing, Rebecca Button, search engine optimization, SEO
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Forum Marketing for Small Businesses
Monday, January 7th, 2008
Looking for an inexpensive way to spread the word about your small business online? Forums can be a valuable resource for getting the word out about your company’s products and services, establishing credibility for yourself and your business, and driving traffic to your website.
Forum marketing has the perfect price tag for small business owners. It’s free to participate in forums, so this activity can easily fit into your expense budget. However, benefiting from forum marketing does require time, effort, and consistent activity.
Find the Right Forums
The first step to effectively market your business through forums is to identify the most appropriate forum websites for your purposes. Start out by conducting online research to identify established, heavily trafficked forums that are relevant to your business and that appeal to your target market.
The best way to identify appropriate forums for your marketing purposes is to spend some time surfing the Internet looking for forum websites relevant to your business. For example, if your business provides corporate logo embroidery services for small businesses, it’s a good idea for you to look for good small business marketing discussion boards.
Spend a few days monitoring the forums that appeal to you, and see what kinds of discussions take place on them. To start with, choose one forum that seems to be the most active and appropriate for your business, and register as a user.
Keep in mind that you are participating in this forum as a representative of your business, so choose an appropriate username. If your goal is to brand yourself or your company, it’s a good idea to use your real name or your company’s name as your username.
Create Your Signature Line
Before you make your first post on the forum, you’ll need to create a signature line. This usually consists of two to three lines of text that show up on every post you make. Look at the other posts in the forum for examples of signature lines that are appropriate for the board. Typically, the best signature line for marketing purposes is one that contains your name, a brief tag line, and a link to your website.
Establish a Credible Presence
The same principles that apply to face to face networking opportunities also apply to online networking. You have to build credibility with the participants of your selected forum by contributing to the conversation in a helpful and productive manner. People participate in forums to get to know other people with similar challenges and to find useful tips and advice. You can’t approach forum marketing as a direct sales avenue for your business.
When you’re new to a forum, you have to establish trust and credibility with the participants by offering useful information, tips, and advice without asking for anything in return. As the other forum participants get to know you and see that you have valuable contributions to make, they’ll grow to respect you and become interested in learning about you and your business.
However, if your first posts on the forum are obvious attempts to sell your own products or services, you won’t be welcomed into the community with open arms. As a matter of fact, you’ll likely be viewed with disdain and suspicion by the regulars. If you come across as someone who is participating in the forum just to try to sell something, you’ll never win the respect of the other participants.
Comply With Forum Rules and Policies
Most forums contain a post near the top that clearly spells out the rules and policies for participation. It’s important to read and understand this information before you begin posting messages. Regulations may vary significantly among forums, so don’t make assumptions without checking the written policy. If you fail to comply with the rules, knowingly or unknowingly, you can get banned from participation.
Be A Consistent Participant
To enjoy the maximum marketing benefit from your forum posting activities, it’s important to participate on a consistent basis. It will take time for you to build name recognition and credibility with the other members. The best way to make progress is to post helpful replies or original questions on a regular basis.
Try to set aside a few minutes each day to catch up on the latest forum postings. Time spent reviewing your chosen forum and making relevant posts is time dedicated to an important marketing activity for your business. Remember that every time you post to the forum, if there’s a link in your signature line, you’re creating a backlink to your website. This helps your website’s ranking with the search engines.
Additionally, as other members see your continued activity on the forum, they’ll begin to get interested in learning more about who you are and what you do. Eventually, forum participants will start clicking on the link to your website, where they just might decide to do business with you.
Tags: advice, E-Commerce and E-Business, forum marketing, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, Rebecca Button, search engine optimization, SEO, small business, tips
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How to Increase Your Website’s Ranking, One Blog at a Time!
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
By now, most website owners know that getting reputable sites to link to their site will have a positive effect on rankings. The problem is getting GOOD sites to give you those links. A powerful marketing strategy for your website can be getting bloggers to not only list your e-commerce site, but to talk about your products and services. Bloggers are generally regarded as authorities on certain subject matter, which make blogs one of the best places to get those valued authority links.
What are authority links? They’re links coming from sites that are considered by search engines to be of a high value, due to the high number of inbound links going to those sites. To the search engines, inbound links = authority. These sites are generally original content-heavy and cover very specific topics. Getting links from authority sites can boost your site’s credibility and in turn your search engine rankings.
If you remember back to the Million Dollar Homepage with Alex Tew, the success of Tew’s idea happened because of the hundreds and hundreds of bloggers that were writing about it - and the thousands and thousands of people who were reading all those blogs. If used properly, blogs can not only give you links, but readership - and in turn more links, traffic, etc.
So, how do you get bloggers to list your e-tail site or talk about your products?
Think of this as a marketing strategy, something that needs to be planned and researched before it’s executed. First, put together a list of all the relevant blog sites for your particular industry. This will take doing research on Google. For instance, if your site sells scrapbooking supplies you’ll want to search for "scrapbook blog", "scrapbooking blog", etc. Google has a blog search that will make finding these blogs easier - http://blogsearch.google.com/ . You can also try sites like Technorati.com , which will also give you "Authority" scores for each blog.
Now that you have your list, it’s time to come up with a strategy to get your link on those sites. There are really only two ways to get this done, so read about each and decide which method is best for the type of site you have.
Tell the blogger about your site and ask for a link - This is the easiest way of getting links to your site, however it only works if you have something new and interesting to offer. If you are yet another iPod accessory store, then forget it. But, if you are selling a brand new product that lets you turn your iPod into a universal television remote, then bloggers just might be interested. Imagine if you were writing an industry-related blurb day after day, you’d love something new to write about. Bloggers are just waiting for the "next big topic", and if your website saves them from racking their brain for ideas, then it’s a win-win. You have to be honest with yourself though; don’t bother asking for a link if your site or products don’t have any sort of "wow factor". If you annoy the blogger you’ll inevitably ruin your chances of ever getting a link or even a shot at the next strategy.
Think your products don’t have that "wow factor"? Maybe something else about your site or business does. Maybe you’re having a contest on your site, or you’re giving away something cool with each order. If you pitch that to the blogger, you might get yourself a link.
Become actively involved with blog sites - Don’t lose hope of getting blog links just because your site isn’t toting the latest gizmo gadgets. It may take more time and effort than the first strategy, but the result is the same - links! Start by posting highly informative comments on various blogs in your industry - but be sure to post on a regular basis. This way the blogger and posters will know who you are and hopefully will have some respect for you as an informative commenter. After a while, and in certain situations, you may find that mentioning your website is relevant to the blog post. Just be sure that the mention actually adds to the conversation and is not at all a sales pitch.
It’s a good idea to do a combination of both options. Start by getting involved with informative comments so the blogger comes to recognize you. Then move on to introducing your site to the blogger via email and asking for a link.
How NOT to get blog links
Never post comments to a blog just to mention your website or to sell your products or services. This cannot be stressed enough. Both bloggers and posters hate this and you are sure to get a slew of negative posts behind it (and get your comment marked as spam by the blogger).
When asking the blogger for a link, don’t annoy them. One introductory email, plus one follow up after a week is enough. If you don’t get a response, don’t keep spamming their inbox with link requests - just move on.
In Summary
The key to getting blog links is simple: offer bloggers and posters something relevant and interesting. If blogs were all about sales pitches, no one would ever read them. Good blogs are read because they’re interesting and informative. So, your website and postings should be too!
Tags: blogging, blogs, Carrie Hinkel, E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, website, website rank
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Producing Your Own Podcasts
Friday, December 14th, 2007
There are many reasons to produce your own podcast and put it on your site. First, if you are selling a product or service there is no better way to advertise than to tell people about your products or services. People respond well to voices and also will feel like they are getting to know you by listening to your voice. If you ever have a need to call them regarding anything, your voice will sound familiar. You could package it as an audio newsletter, audio product descriptions, however it would fit best with your niche.
Podcasting is a relatively new kind of technology that allows a person to download audio that can be listened to at a later time. It’s kind of like a book on tape, but you can download it straight off of the internet and listen to it when you want to, when it’s most convenient for your schedule.
How do I make and publish my first podcast?
The first step is research. Find out what other podcasts sound like and what other people are already doing in your niche. This is also a useful activity to remove any fears that all of the podcasts already produced would be of a highly professional quality - some are, but most are not!
There are many different types of software to choose from to record the content for your podcast. You can download several for free on Download.com, or find software like Propaganda 1.0. It offers a complete solution for the podcast creator. You can download the free trial to ensure it does everything you want it to, and then pay the $49.95 to activate the full version.
In terms of hardware, you just need a microphone headset like the one for Skype. They are inexpensive and the quality is acceptable.
For your content, make sure you have some music, maybe a fun sound effect or two, perhaps someone else’s voice for a sound bite or two to change up the sound a little. Talk about what you know, try to be animated, and let your expertise show off over the air waves.
Publishing Your Podcast
With the Propaganda software this is pretty easy as well. There are basically three steps to publishing your podcast.
1 - Create an MP3 file of the podcast. MP3 is the most common file format for podcasts. Propaganda will allow you to convert up to 16 tracks of audio into a single MP3 file and choose the most appropriate. Try something middle of the road and not too high in quality, or the file will be huge but too poor in quality.
2 - Save the MP3 file on your website or have your web designer handle that for you.
3 - Set up an RSS feed. Propaganda can do this for you as well with its publication feature. The RSS feed is a method that allows podcast players to find your podcast and subscribe to updates. When you produce a new podcast, it shows that you have updated this feed and the podcast players download the new podcast for the listener.
Promote Your Podcast
Get people listening! Your friends, family, colleagues, customers, get them downloading. Podcasting is growing in popularity, so it is a good time to get your own show up and running before your competition catches onto the idea.
Tags: content, E-Commerce and E-Business, larry Slusser, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, podcasts, search engine optimization, SEO
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Why SEO Software Isn’t Always The Answer
Friday, December 7th, 2007
There seems to be a groundswell at the moment, when it comes to small businesses and their Internet presence. That groundswell is the opinion that to have any kind of success online, you need to buy specialist Search Engine Optimization (SEO) software to help with your web presence. Many companies have bought into this belief, and shelled out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in the process. Yet it’s money that could have been spent in a far more productive manner.
Although there’s no denying that an SEO software package can and indeed does offer a decent service, it’s nothing like the people selling it would have you believe. It may get your website URL placed in “thousands” of search engines, but many of them are ones that no one has ever heard of. And SEO software may offer you tips on what keywords to use to get your website and business noticed, but again these could be out-of-date and useless by the time your website has gone live on the relevant search engines.
The Real SEO Software
If you really want your website to succeed, you definitely need to have the right SEO tactics to get it ranked in the search engines that matter (Google, Yahoo, MSN). However, speak to the majority of the SEO professionals and search engine marketing specialists, and they will tell you that an SEO software package is not the way to go.
Indeed, if you look at Google’s FAQ section, the search engine giant even states that you should “avoid submitting your site to thousands of search engines… The results would not be in a way you would consider positive.” If this is coming from the search engine that every company owner would give his or her right arm for first page ranking in, perhaps it’s time to listen.
With more than 90% of all web traffic coming from Google, MSN and Yahoo, there’s no real need for your site to be placed with thousands of other search engines anyway. Instead, you should hire an SEO professional or company to help you out, or even learn about the process yourself.
The Wording is Key
If you’ve already got a website, or are in the process of setting one up, you’ve probably heard the term “keywords”. These keywords, along with Meta titles and descriptions, are amongst the top tactics to get any website noticed. Keywords are words or phrases that people type into a search engine to find a particular product or service. So if your company were “Bathroom Tiles and Mirrors”, your keywords would be based around “bathroom”, “tiles” and “mirrors”. The Meta title and description are what you see just under search result headlines.
Whereas SEO software will just give you the standard keywords for your business, a good SEO professional can advise of latent keywords - these are combinations of different keywords that lead to far better placement on the likes of Google.
SEO is Not Quick
Many advertisements for SEO software claim to get you listed in search engines “quickly.” What you absolutely must know about SEO is that it’s not quick - it’s an ongoing process. No software out there is going to get you first page search engine placement in a week - and if they do, then it’s probably on all those “thousands” of search engines that no one uses.
So, instead of spending hundreds of dollars on an automated SEO software system that may or may not get the results you’re looking for, you will get far better results employing the services of an SEO specialist. They will cost a little more normally, but the difference in results can very often recoup that cost in no time.
Tags: advice, danny brown, E-Commerce and E-Business, search engine optimization, SEO, software, tips
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Who’s Afraid of PageRank: The Smart Way to Increase Ranking
Monday, November 19th, 2007
Recently, Google’s page rank “smackdown” created a frenzy of confusion among website owners - leaving them wondering how their page rank dropped one, two or even five slots down. Well, the answer lies in Google’s new guidelines regarding links:
Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
So, basically, Google is on to you! They know all the linking tricks - everything, including paid links. And, if they catch you participating (and you know they will), then your site will be penalized by a drop in page rank. Google, as well as web surfers, want the most relevant sites to be at the top of a search page, not the sneakiest ones.
So, while the rules have changed, there are still plenty of ways to use linking to your advantage in order to increase your rank on Google’s natural search listings.
How to link, while still playing by Google’s rules:
Get other sites to link to you - These are the most coveted links and the ones that search engines love the most. This is when a website links to your site, without a reciprocal link on your end. The trick is getting websites to mention your link on their site. However, there are plenty of ways to do it. Here are just a few:
* Create a newsworthy Press Release.
* Show your website to webmasters and bloggers who may think your site is relevant to them.
* Create an interesting blog on your site, so others will want to link to it.
*Get your customers to link to you.
Post on forums - It’s important that the sites you are posting on are actually relevant to your category of business. So, if you sell dog toys, don’t bother posting on a baseball memorabilia forum. Be sure your information is useful and post regularly. Then at the bottom of each posting you can leave your signature - which will include your website address.
Post on Q & A sites - There are plenty of question and answer websites like askexperts.com or Yahoo! Answers; posting your answer provides you with an opportunity to get your website link on yet another website page. Just be sure the topic is relevant to your company’s offerings, otherwise you are wasting your time.
Submit articles to websites - Since you have a website, you also have plenty of knowledge that you can share with others about your industry. Writing an article is a great way to share information and get a link to your website. It’s important that your article is newsworthy and not just a promotional piece. Your link will appear as part of the author’s signature. There are a ton of article submission sites you can try: articlebase.com, articlegeek.com, etc.
Of course, these aren’t all the linking strategies, but it’s enough to get you started on the road to increasing your page rank. The most important thing to remember is that if linking is going to be a strategy for your website, you need to do it regularly - like several new links, several times a week (or even each day). PageRank is not something you have to be afraid of - just be smart.
Tags: advice, Carrie Hinkel, E-Commerce and E-Business, increase page rank, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, page rank, search engine optimization, SEO, tips
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Knowing the ABC’s of SEO
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
You don’t have to look very far to find success stories when it comes to starting an Internet based business, or starting a website to complement your existing business. The Internet offers a whole new way of getting product and service information out to a huge customer base without a lot of overhead.
The Internet also means that you need to get noticed in order to have a successful website. Once people start visiting, your revenue potential is vast; not only in sales, but also in advertisements.
So how do you get noticed by Internet users? The most basic method used today is the process of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
What is SEO?
Like so many other terms, SEO is a pretty basic phrase that makes the most sense when you put it into a personal context. Let’s say that you are researching a product or topic for whatever reason. The first thing you are likely to do is go to a search engine (Google, Yahoo!, and so on) and type in the words you are looking for. The engines call up the results, and you start to visit the pages. It’s possible that you are one of the 99% of people who don’t go past the first three pages of search results to find the answers that you need.
Search engine optimization is the process of ensuring that your website ranks well within the top results on search engine pages. While the process is free in practice, in actuality many sites are spending lots of money in order to place well, helped along by experts in the search engine optimization field.
What Do Search Engines Use To Rank Pages?
A proper SEO marketing campaign means that a site uses the criteria set forth by the search engines in order to rank well. There is a bit of a trick here, though; search engines don’t divulge what their ranking criteria are. They don’t want people abusing their algorithms, so the criteria is a very closely guarded secret.
What we do know about SEO, we know mostly through trial and error; and in fact the search engines are changing their criteria all the time in order to weed out bad SEO practices.
The Golden Rules of SEO
That makes the whole SEO process seem like a waste of time, doesn’t it? But the fact is that most of the common SEO techniques seem to work, largely due to what I call the golden rule of SEO: search engines are seeking to connect their customers with the best information possible, so you need to write for people, not search engines.
All of the changes that the big search engines make to their criteria are directly related to giving their users useful information. That means ranking sites that are more relevant than others, using keywords and so on.
There are a few different ways that search engines determine relevance. Links pointing to the site and content using popular keywords are probably two of the most important. Basic ground work in SEO, then, means creating content for your website which contains the keywords and phrases that people are likely to search for related to your product or service on the engines, and generating links which point back to your site.
The search engines find both your content and links to your site through the use of programs called "spiders" or ‘bots". These "crawl" the web, taking note of criteria which they have been programmed to notice. It might seem like an easy task to just put a lot of keywords onto your pages or to generate a lot of links using a link farm, but the search engines caught onto these tactics not long ago and now sites are not ranked or are even banned when they use these "black hat" tactics.
You should also keep in mind that although around 50% of first time visitors to a site arrive through a search engine, that leaves 50% who arrive via some other method. Don’t neglect everything else to concentrate only on SEO.
The most important thing you can bring to an SEO campaign is patience. It will take a while for your site to be ranked at all, longer to be ranked highly. If you keep in mind that you need to create links, and that you need to create relevant content, your site will eventually rank well on the results page.
Tags: advice, E-Commerce and E-Business, Leeia Ladipoh, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, search engine optimization, SEO, tips
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