Showing posts with label smo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smo. Show all posts

Friday, March 18, 2011

SEO Tips - SEO Secrets

1. Before You Start SEO

Before you start doing SEO, there are some important things to always keep in mind.

: Keywords. Remember that it all starts with keywords. Do a proper keyword research before you put your time and effort (and sometimes money) into SEO. Preferably, you should test your target keywords with PPC to make sure there's traffic you expect and if it's a good traffic (if it converts). Also keep in mind that you should target one keyword per page unless they are very tightly related.

2: Content is key in SEO. So what if you do a great job to rank a page with crappy content and the visitors immediately click the back button after seeing your site. Google tracks the CTR and time spent on your site and if these indicators are very low, you will not hold on to your rankings for long. Worse yet, if your site looks spammy, the folks from Google may manually remove your site from their index at all.

On the other hand, if your content is great, people will naturally link to you, thus increasing your rankings even more without you having to do anything. What you should strive for is to be better than your competitors on the first page of Google by providing better content than they do. I can't stress enough the importance of this. If you don't have good content, don't even start SEO.

2. What is SEO?

I'll assume that you know what is SEO (otherwise you wouldn't have found this report) and make it quick, if just to be sure that we're on the same page.
Search Engine Optimization is a method of manipulating search engine results to rank your pages higher and get more traffic. While most experts categorize SEO to black hat and white hat (sometimes gray hat), I would argue that all SEO is equal. The difference is how you get back-links – whether you spam or not. In this report I will not teach you to spam and stick to what is called white hat SEO (with a little bit of grey hat for that extra flavor ;))
There's on page SEO and off page SEO. The former is what you do on your website to increase your rankings (that is, your content and site structure), the latter is link building.

3.On Page SEO

There are just a few elements of on page SEO, and they arguably have little influence to your rankings (as opposed to back-links), however they are so easy to implement that there's no reason not to. These are the musts to have on your page:

Page title – make sure to have your keyword in the title while also making it attractive to the user. There's no use of a listing if nobody's gonna click it. Think of it as an ad headline.

Meta description – while it doesn't have a direct impact on your rankings, it's important to have an attractive description because that's what the users will see. In other words, it's your ad. Make sure to have the keyword here too, otherwise the search engines will not display it.

H1  heading  –  make  sure  to  have  the  keyword  in  the  heading  (<h1>  tag)

because structurally it tells what the page is about and it makes easier for the search engines to understand what your page is about. While you can rank a page relatively easy even without h1 tags, let's not make it harder than it has to be.

The content – make sure to mention the keyword in your content. The rule of thumb is to let the copy flow naturally without worrying about keyword density. If you are worried, include the keyword near the beginning of the content, once or twice in the middle (depending on the length) and near the end.

Website Structure – your website must have a logical structure and has to be easy to navigate. A quick and dirty solution without having to worry about it is using Wordpress. Here are some guidelines for your site's structure:

•Identify categories. Preferably they should be keywords (use a keyword tool for ideas). Each category should be listed in a sidebar or a menu.
•If there are a lot of categories and it makes sense, you can have sub-categories. However, try to limit the level to 1 (i.e. Sub-categories without further sub-categories within them).

•A currently opened category should list all pages under it. If there are too many pages to list, implement pagination. The links to the pages must have the target keywords as anchor text.

•The most important pages should be listed in the menu or sidebar on every page of the site. That way you make use the ranking power of the site itself to increase the rankings of those pages.

•Always link back to the home page with the main keyword as anchor text (as opposed to “Home” - unless you want to rank for the keyword “home”).

Age of your domain – this is perhaps the most significant on-page SEO factor that can help with your rankings by itself. The website's age is one of the most important factors that Google takes into account as well as it allows you to be more aggressive with link building. So when starting a new site, look for old domain on auction. There are several domain auctions out there ( Go Daddy  Auctions,  Snapnames,  Pool,  Namejet – to name a few). And there are thousands

upon thousands of expired domains in different niches that you can buy for as little as $10. I recommend doing this for any new project you do as it will help your SEO a lot.

4. Off Page SEO (Link Building)

Now this is where the magic happens. If we take the on page SEO for granted, all SEO can be summed up into getting as many quality links as needed. As such, all SEO tips and techniques come down to link building.

But first, let me define what is a quality back-link. There are 2 important factors as far as votes for your page (i.e. links from other sites):
1. Importance
2. Relevance

An important note is that at least as of writing this relevance is not that important of a factor and links that are considered important, still help your ranking regardless of the relevance of the page they're on. However, many experts believe that Google is moving towards relevance and it makes sense to aim for relevant back-links. Another reason why it makes sense is that you're likely to get more direct traffic from relevant sites than irrelevant.

The importance of a page is simply defined by PageRank. The higher it is, the more important the page is. Note that there's a common misconception to assume a home page PageRank of a site to be the PageRank of the whole site. There's no such thing and every single page has its own PageRank. So just because you get a link from a random page without a PR on a site with a high home page PR, doesn't mean you get any benefit from it. That doesn't mean that you don't get it either, but you should always look for the PR of that particular page and not other pages.
Also, keep in mind that the PR you see in Google Toolbar, is not an actual PR and is rather a snapshot of the actual PR at some time in the past. This snapshot is updated every few months. That means a page with a PR may have a different PR in reality, and more importantly, a page without a PR may actually have one.

Here are the guidelines you must follow when getting backlinks:

•Never SPAM. Nobody likes spammers and you should not be one when building links. While technically only e-mail spam is illegal, that doesn't mean you should spam forums, blogs and other sites. If a website doesn't want to have your links – don't push them.

•Make sure the page has a PR. However, even if it doesn't, still consider getting the link as it may have a PR in the future. A rule of thumb here is to consider where in the hierarchy of the website the page is. If it's a page linked from the home page, for example, it's likely that it does have a PR and is important. On the other hand, if the page is some obscure page that is hard to find without having its url, you should probably not bother with it.

•Pay attention to other outgoing links. Your link shares the PR with other outgoing links on the same page, so the less of them there are, the better. Avoid pages with 100s of outgoing links, as you will get little benefit from them and Google might consider it a link farm (a “bad neighborhood”) and in extreme cases decrease your rankings by a notch rather than increasing them. However, don't worry too much about it as bad incoming links rarely have significant negative influence (otherwise anyone would be able to sabotage their competitors by simply building some bad links for them).

•Try to get links closer to the top of the page (preferably in-content) rather than the footer or sidebar. While it doesn't have such a huge impact, it can have a slightly better effect.

Where to Get Backlinks?

Here are most of the places you need to know:

•You can get some, what I call, “filler links” (links of lower quality) from article
directories, Web 2.0 sites, social bookmarks, blog comments, forum posts, classified ads, press releases, videos, etc. But again, don't spam. To be safe, stick to just article directories. All of these sites give you only low importance back-links so it's natural to post low quality content. However if you do so, you end up spamming. That's a big no-no and the benefit you get is little. Instead, you should use these sites to market your site, but that's a subject for another repot.

•Use your other sites! I can't believe how often this method is overlooked but it is. To tell you a secret, I've grown to have so many sites that I can rank for most keywords I want just by linking back from them. Linking to yourself is natural thing to do and even Google agrees with that. An important point to note is that if you create sites for SEO purposes (and you should do it ;)) you should use different hosts/IPs as much as possible. Google “seo hosting” for more information.

•You can buy high PR links. Keep in mind that this is considered as a no-no by Google and they recommend against it as well as may ban your site if they catch you. On the other hand, you can buy links for traffic and nobody can enforce the site that sells you the link to use the nofollow attribute. If you can get both, traffic and SEO benefit, why not!

•You can exchange links. If you do it, use the 3 way exchange. That is, you get someone to link to you, but instead of linking back to them from the same site, you link from another. This is to avoid the reciprocal linking which search engines de-value. Keep in mind that like buying links, exchanging links is also “grey-hat”.

•Buy other websites. If you don't have other websites yourself, buy them. While high traffic websites are expensive, you can find some low traffic websites with a good PR that would sell for cheap.

•Buy expired domains. You don't even have to buy a whole website, just a domain with age and PR is even cheaper and will have the same effect once you rebuild the site. You can retain the PR of an expired domain if you rebuild it as soon as you get it transferred to you. This is a very advanced technique so I suggest you to find more information about buying domains if you decide to try doing it.

•Guest posting can be a great source for high quality links as well as traffic. There are many high profile blogs in any niche and many of them are more than welcome to publish guest posts. You can find them on Google by searching for “write for us”, “guest post” and similar phrases. The key to keep in mind here is the quality of the content you can provide them.

•Release a free Wordpress theme. You don't have to know anything about design, just pay someone to do it and include your link in the footer. Submit the theme to several theme directories you can find on Google. Now anyone who uses it will automatically give you a back-link. You can release any theme or script this way but the reason I've chosen Wordpress themes is because the use of WP is growing every day and there are thousands of people looking for free themes – it's a great way to get potentially thousands of decent quality links. The only limitation is that you can only do it with web design/marketing related sites.

5. Step-by-Step SEO

All this theory is great, but how on earth do you implement it? Let me break down my SEO process in simple steps:

1.Choose the keyword and publish the content on your website

2.Make sure the on page SEO is right (chapter 3)

3.Submit a few articles to article directories to get some “filler” back-links, submit your site to RSS directories (if your site has an RSS feed)

4.Get one quality back-link using one of the methods form chapter 4 and see what effect it has (may have to wait a week or so to see it)

5.Get more “filler” backlinks (best to optimize it with all those blog networks and similar link building services)

6.Get quality links one by one and monitor the results until you get the desired position (#1 probably). To get an idea of how many and what PR links you will need, you can research your competition to see what links they have using a tool like Market Samurai or SEO Elite

7.Once you're in the position you want just continue to build “filler” links and don't get any more quality links unless you fall lower (in other words, be efficient with your resources and avoid over-optimization).

Usually if the keyword has a relatively easy competition (500k or so) just a couple of high quality links will get you to the first page (yes, it's that easy when you do it right). For higher competition, you just have to keep building high quality links and be patient.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Social media optimization (SMO)

Social media optimization (SMO) can be defined as implementing changes to optimize a site for generating advertising through social media, online communities and community websites.

Techniques of SMO consist of adding up RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, and to incorporate anything that can allow an online community to communicate, such as photos, videos and blogs. The prime focus of Social media optimization (SMO) is on motivating traffic from sources other than search engines, though better search ranking is also an advantage of successful SMO.

Social Media Optimization is all about breaking down the site walls so content can be easily found, circulated and shared by the community. So the site gets visibility without depending strictly on search engines.
Benefits of social media optimization
Social media optimization is the next level in viral marketing where word of mouth is produced through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites like, facebook, twitter, digg, delicious, reditt, flicker etc. There is huge traffic on this site; all you need is a proper SMO campaign.

SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION allows you to efficiently spread the word and generate an intense amount of interest for a relatively unknown product or service and position the brand to the customers in their own terms and environment which results in a more genuine marketing message.

There are some other benefits which can be of great help:
  • Create Brand Awareness
  • Help in Lead Generation
  • Event Promotion
  • Reward inbound links
  • Help your content travel
  • Customer Loyalties
  • Help in globalizing your business
  • Single platform for unlike business minds
Top 10 Social network Sites
  • www.facebok.com
  • www.myspace.com
  • www.twitter.com
  • www.flixxeter.com
  • www.linkedin.com
  • www.tagged.com
  • www.classmates.com
  • www.myyearbook.com
  • www.imeem.com
  • www.reunion.com
Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites

  • www.digg.com
  • www.delicious.com
  • www.stumbleUpon.com
  • www.reddit.com
  • www.fark.com
  • www.technorati.com
  • www.kaboodle.com
  • www.mixx.com
  • www.propeller.com
  • www.twine.com

Thursday, January 13, 2011

SEO Terms Part -3

Top 10 Seekers:
Page listed in the top 10 search engine results for a specific keyword or phrase.
First Time Visitors:
The number of visitors accessing your site first. It identifies a visitor for the first time by the absence of a cookie.
Visitors Returners:
The number of visitors who stayed at their site in a period prior to being returned and have returned. It determines whether a visitor is no returner through a cookie. Visitors returnees are counted only once in the period but have multiple entries to the Site. port period.
Unique Visitors:
Unique visitors are day visitors only on a given day. A visitor can only be a first-time visitor or a visitor nonreturner. Unique visitors are counted only once during the period several times while accessing a website. Number of visitors accessing our website over a specific period of time from a particular IP address.
Page Views:
Each time a page is downloaded by the user. In terms of entries to the site only HTML pages, dynamic pages and forms considered page views, no access to images, audio, video or advertisements.
Average Page Visitors:
The number of pages each visitor views on average.
3-Way Link Exchange:
How to link exchange agreement between three sites, a site of links to site b -> b link to another site c -> c link to another site.
Algorithm:
Algorithm is a formula that is used by the search engine to categorize sites
Anchor text:
A text is a hyperlink.
Backlinks:
Backlinks are links from other websites to your website or web page. In the world of SEO, the more backlinks you have, the higher the page-rank of your site.
Black Hat SEO:
This is an unethical SEO method used to classify your site as a site with hidden letters, black background, etc.
BLS:
backlinks.
Cache:
Cache is a storage area engine search database where you store all web pages.

Cgi-bin:
cgi-bin is the name of the folder that contains the interface of the gateway binaries and scripts.
Cloaking:
A black-hat system delivers customized content to a website search engine spider but hiding the code or information to visitors.
DoFollow:
Standard of incoming links that do not have the attribute "nofollow".
Firefox:
A web browser developed by Mozilla that is free to download and offers an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Folksonomy:
Social networks managed by the same social network users. Examples include del.icio.us, "technorati.com" and "flickr.com".

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

SEO Terms Part -2

Domain Name:
This is the text name corresponding to an IP number from a computer connected to the Internet.

Indexed Pages:
This number represents the total number of pages visited and indexed by Google in its website. This number can conclude to what extent the site is indexed by a search engine.
Web Site Optimization:
A thorough analysis of the HTML code, tags, keywords, web statistics, etc.That is, the design, structure and contents that make up a Web page in order to bring it to the top of search engines, or the first results of search engines, most popular.
Website Optimization For Search Engines:
The process of modification and analysis of web pages to get to position the page in the highest positions within the major search engines. The analysis is comprehensive because it includes labels and tags titles, codes and Web design. Check out our promotions website optimization or search engine optimization.
Page Rank:
The Google Page Rank is numerical value assigned by Google to each page present in its database. This value is calculated by Google using special algorithms based on qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the external links on each website.
Entry Pages:
Indicates the number of times a page is the first to be seen within the route of a visitor clicks on your site. Typically the home page should have a high number, if not the top of the list.
Exit Pages
Indicates the number of times a page is the first to be seen within the route of a visitor clicks on your site. Typically the home page should have a high number in this list, unless you have a lot of dynamic content on your site that users see only one time.
Search Keywords / Phrases:
These are the words that users employ search engines in order to reach a website. One Stat lets you know what search words your visitors are using to find your site. As the list of keywords can increase you know that keywords important to find your site are ignored by search engines and added to the META KEYWORD tag of each page to improve the performance of your site in search engines.
Criminalization:
Punishment imposed on a particular page from a search engine as a result of using positioning tactics contrary to the editorial standards of that form. Such punishment often results in the loss of positions and the disappearance of the website, sometimes all, of that form. All projects are NeoMinds search engine positioning tactics accepted by Google and other search engines without penalty futuristic.
PFI (Pay for Inclusion):
Some search engines and directories charge a fixed amount to consider and review the inclusion of a specific page in its database. This payment does not guarantee in any case, a particular position for the revised website.
Platform:
The operating system (Windows XP, Windows 98, MacOS, Linux, etc.).
Flash Portal:
Flash can speak with a marketing campaign with search engines. Search engines are always looking for text in a webpage, and some sites display designs search engines with no text to index. When a search engine views a page with flash during indexing, the site can be indexed only when the search engine can go around this introduction (e.g. a link that says 'skip intro').
Web Positioning in Search Engines:
Web positioning in search engine optimization is the why certain techniques are seeking high positions under certain searches on search engines.
Relevance:
Affinity of a page including a listing of results of a search with the subject or information sought by a navigator
Server:
A computer that hosts information available to users (called clients) on the Internet or other network.
Referring Site:
The URL of a website that has a link that serves as a reference for visitors to come to a site.
Titles Different Pages:
Each page on a website has its own subject, it is very important that the title of the pages tells whether your context contains. A search engine can judge by its title page.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Top Tips for Social Media Marketing

Social media is a powerful and cost-effective marketing tool for your business. It will not only put you directly in touch with existing and new clients, it will make you more personable, trustworthy and approachable. It will also improve links to your website, boost your SEO, help you to raise your own profile and establish new networks while attracting more business overall.
Of course, for most of you these tips will be completely obvious, however - I have had many people request some social media marketing advice, so to get you started, here are my top tips:
Twitter
Twitter is a hugely effective free marketing tool for your business. It’s a micro-blogging site and somewhere that allows you to talk directly to your customers quickly and easily. You basically follow people and people follow you.
You can tweet about yourself while keeping updated on the rest of the world. Sign up and create an account, reserving your business name and start ‘tweeting’. You can tweet about your company news, point people back to your website and any useful blogs you might have, or even respond to tweets about your sector.
If you’ve got an iPhone, you can use an application called TwitPic to instantly share your photos on Twitter. It’s a great way to add more personality to your business.
A useful ‘search’ function on Twitter will help you to find relevant people to follow or even target. For instance, as a PR person, I follow PR Week but also lots of design and marketing agencies around Staffordshire and Cheshire. I’ve found lots of new business by tweeting about my services and sharing my expertise. I’ve also searched for things like ‘PR services’ and ‘web developer required’ to target others and introduce myself.
To make the most out of your Twitter account you can use more advanced tools like Hootsuite or TweetDeck. These will make using Twitter a whole lot easier and come with lots of useful features. Take for instance, Hootsuite – you can schedule Tweets to be posted onto your profile while you’re away from your desk. Twitter has also recently introduced ‘Lists’ whereby you can organise all the people you are following, placing them into categories.
Bear in mind that you can't just self-broadcast. Social media is about sharing and talking to people. Get involved with things like #FF - or 'Follow Friday' where you recommend people to follow every Friday. Or 'RT', meaning 'Retweet', things that people are tweeting about to show your support.
And don't expect to win lots of business overnight with Twitter. Think of it more like a way of building relationships that might turn into customers. But never expect it, otherwise people will see through your insincerity.
Facebook
If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest. As a business, you can start a Page where people can 'like' you, similar to Twitter, and become fans of your business. Like Twitter, this is a fantastic free marketing tool to help build your online presence and get more people talking about you and your products or services.
Again, you can point people back to your website, your blog posts or even seek customer feedback. For example, on Creative Boom’s Fanpage, I often talk directly to my fans, asking their opinion on how I can continue to improve the website. As a result, I recently launched this new Tips section – to other help and advice to freelancers, start-ups and small businesses.
Please note that Facebook is only really suitable for consumer type businesses. There's no point in starting a Page if you sell tiles, for example. Facebook is only suited to those companies who naturally have a community... Take for example, high street retailer ZARA. Their Facebook page has literally millions of 'Likes' and all because their product is so suitable for this social media environment.Therefore, if your firm is more business-to-business, consider just focusing on Twitter instead.
Linked In
Linked In is a business version of Facebook that is hugely popular and has over 60 million users worldwide. It has some very useful functions like ‘Recommendations’ where you can encourage clients or colleagues to add a testimonial to your Linked In profile.
It’s also another social media network that has Groups. On my own profile, I've followed relevant groups such as Staffordshire Business and regularly talk online through the forums. It’s also a great way of keeping informed of any relevant business networking events going on in your local area.
But I'll be honest, I don't really like LinkedIn. It's my least favourite of all the social media. But it's there and many people use it, so it's always best to be a part of it, rather than not at all.
Blogging
Writing a blog gives you credibility, helps you to showcase your expertise and target potential new customers online. What’s more, by integrating a blog into your current website, you’ll be providing fresh and relevant copy.
And search engines like Google love regularly updated copy, which will really help boost your SEO. If you’re stuck for things to write then consider the following: you could comment on something in the news; provide tips and advice; share your expertise; review a product or service relevant to your industry or even just talk about your recent client wins. Or read my Things to Blog about when you run out of Ideas article.
Don’t forget to give your blog posts titles with SEO in mind. Think of what people would search for in the search engines. For instance, this feature would be ‘Top tips for social media marketing’. It’s another great way of being found through the search engine results pages.
Forums, chat rooms and chatting online
Contribute to online conversation and check out other people’s blogs that are within your sector, adding intelligent comments/debate to their posts. It will give you further credibility and put you in touch with hundreds of potential new customers.
More importantly, it will sometimes build links back to your own website. Why is link building so important? It’s relevant for SEO and helps to drive more traffic to your website. The more traffic you have, the more potential customers you’re reaching. The more strong and relevant links you have, the more your rankings will improve. Remember, social media goes hand-in-hand with SEO.
Multimedia
Have you considered using multimedia to boost your online presence? Websites like Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube[http://www.youtube.com] are a great way to add more personality to your business.
If you’re a designer and you want to showcase your work, you can easily produce a video gallery of your work and post it onto YouTube. If you’re a photographer you can upload your work onto Flickr, a photo sharing site that also has groups, forums and online communities.
Or how about adding videos to your own website? You could demonstrate a new product? Or just talk to your customers direct by introducing ‘vlogs’ or video blogs.
Join everything up!
Finally, once you’ve got your own Twitter and Facebook accounts up and running and you’ve started a blog or introduced YouTube videos, why not connect them all up? You can use things like Twitterfeed to tap into your blog’s RSS feed and automatically post things onto Twitter and Facebook.
Just think of Twitter and Facebook as powerful tools that will drive traffic to your website. Don’t forget to add some social media icons to your website so that people can easily follow you on Twitter or become your fan on Facebook.And before you know it, you'll have built up your own online community and be in touch with a whole new range of interesting people.