Posted by Admin on December 16th, 2006 — Posted in SEO
by: Kristine Joy Francisco
There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product/services categories, page rank and indexed pages for major search engines, link popularity, and a lot more. After that you will go to your onpage and offpage optimization.
Analyze your site and think of a generic word that best fits for your web site. Choosing the right keywords is a strategy for better search engine positioning http://www.searchengines.com/placement.html. Analyze your business carefully and think of all the words that relate to your company or product. Most techniques to improve your search engine rankings have one thing in common — Keywords. Choosing appropriate keywords is very important. Keywords are what lead search engine users to your site.
That word will act as your major keyword for your site. Then find a keyword tool that will help you generate keywords for your site. There are lots of keyword tools like http://inventory.overture.com. Type in the major keyword that you had thought of and it’ll list all related keywords that you can use. On the tool you’ll see the number of counts your keyword has been searched. Person new on search engine optimization might use the keyword with a lot of counts (I, sure did that before) immediately but SEO experts says that Do NOT use it for a start as keyword searched as many times will just give you a lot of competition and give your site less probability in regards to your visitors. So it is best to start with keywords with a little rivalry. Get some traffic with those keywords and eventually focus on the major keywords.
Examine those sites ranked from 1-10 on the keywords you chose to use in optimizing your site. Check everything about the site that is ranked highly on the search engine. Its URL, see if it is the top level webpage or it is the index page of the site as if it is not you can have a great chance to improve your index page for the target keyword and have a better placement in the SERP’s. Sites page rank. Page rank is Google’s way of giving specific value to how popular your website is. It is based on the number of links you have pointing to your website. Then check their page source, see if their actually optimizing their site for some onpage optimization factors. Factors such as title tag, check if they use the keyword on their title tag which is one of the main reasons why a site is rank well on search engine. Header tags are used to separate topics and range from h1 being very large and bold and h6 which is very small and bold, it should contain your most important keyword or keyword phrases to assist you in ranking higher on Search Engines. Image alt tags are words that will be displayed in place of your image through an older browser or when your visitors have their image turned off, insert a readable keyword phrase within the alt tags of your image and it’ll help you on your rankings. And on the main content if they use the keyword on the beginning and at the end of the page, also whether or not they’ve bolded, underlined, or italicized the keywords on that page. By continuing this process on other keywords that you’ve chose you will have an improved ranking on SERPs.
About The Author
Kristine Joy Francisco, SEO for ProAdultOutsourcing, the best choice for your professional web design and other web development needs, for more information visit http://www.proadultoutsourcing.com/.
Blog: http://www.offshore-web-design.blogspot.com/
http://www.webdesignandseo.wordpress.com/
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Posted by Admin on December 14th, 2006 — Posted in SEO
by: Kent Lewis
You’ve probably already read articles about how to select a search engine marketing (SEM) vendor, as they’re a dime a dozen. Most are written by an agency owner, highlighting areas they are strong in to optimize the soft-sales pitch. If you think this just another one of those articles… good call! Rather than focus on traditional evaluation criteria for selecting an SEM vendor (i.e. credentials, case studies, references, published articles, conversion rates) I’m going to outline value-add criteria that truly generate an ROI for your business. Below are 6 elements any good vendor (SEM or not) should provide as a strategic partner interested in your bottom line.
Education
On the most basic front, an SEM vendor should add value by educating you, the client, by sharing their knowledge of SEM strategies, tactics, technologies & trends. Does your SEM vendor send you news (either ad hoc or via newsletter)? Do they maintain a SEM resources section on their site, or an industry blog? One way we’ve educated our clients is by hosting a free half-day seminar, bringing in our valued partners and industry leaders to share the latest and greatest you usually have to spend big bucks to see at Search Engine Strategies.
Experience
I started my career in high tech PR, representing a technology company (now called LapLink). For the first year I pitched their product to press & analysts, I’d never even seen the application, let alone used it. Once I had an opportunity to try it, I was amazed, and it helped me do my job that much more effectively. Lesson learned. Has your SEM vendor tested or use your product regularly? We not only make a point of experiencing our clients’ products, but we often purchase them. Some are easier than others, as a bag of Kettle Brand Chips are not as much of a financial commitment as a hot new LCD projector from InFocus.
Feedback
I’ve been a customer of WebTrends & WebPosition since the products first launched. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to provide input on future iterations of the products. The same goes for our other service-based clients. If your SEM vendor isn’t providing you feedback based on their experience with your products or services, they’re either ignorant or fearful, and neither is helpful to the evolution of your company.
Referrals
Regardless of whether or not your product or service is useful to an SEM vendor, they should be sending you potential prospects and partners. If they don’t, they aren’t a strategic partner and you’re missing out on growth opportunities. We regularly refer customers and partners to clients, not to mention recommendations on potential vendors and employees. This is particularly true for long-term clients like InFocus and Marqui, who come to Anvil as a trusted partner with a variety of requests.
Exposure
Due to my background in PR, I’ve spent a good amount of time promoting Anvil via press releases, syndicated articles, speaking engagements and awards, but that’s not unusual. What is unusual is if your SEM vendor does that for you. Even though we do not offer PR services per se, we’re always looking for opportunities to promote our clients. We’ve brought a handful of clients into speaking opportunities, and even included them in pitches that have resulted in press coverage.
Strategy
If you’re the type of company that doesn’t look to vendors for strategic business advice, please stop reading here. If you’re the type of company that is always looking for that edge, and is open to input from vendor partners, you should already have received unsolicited advice from your SEM vendor. On more than one occasion, we’ve had to be brutally honest with our clients about short-sighted marketing strategies (that impact us directly) or even bigger picture business strategy (branding, positioning, infrastructure, etc.) based on our collective knowledge and experience. It takes a strong company to listen, and an even stronger company to act on that input. So far, telling clients the truth hasn’t hurt us.
Moving Forward
Assess your current (or potential) SEM vendor based on the number of the above criteria you believe they meet or exceed. One point per element gives you a possible score of six. Below is a helpful matrix that provides suggested next steps in your pursuit of the ideal vendor.
Score:
1-2: Start looking for a new vendor. SEMPO is a great place to start.
3-4: Time to have a heart-to-heart about your desires and expectations as a client and set goals
5-6: You’re in good hands; continue to foster and evolve the relationship.
Indeed, any good SEM vendor should go the extra mile for your company. I have no problem demonstrating my dedication to clients. I liked one client so much, I married her. Talk about commitment.
About The Author
Kent Lewis, President, Anvil Media, Inc.
With a background in integrated marketing, Lewis left a public relations agency in 1996 to start his search engine marketing career. Since then, he has focused on helping clients solve business problems via the Internet. Lewis founded Anvil Media, Inc. in 2000 to help clients enhance their Web site performance, increase their visibility and generate sales online. He was also Director of Marketing and Business Development at goodguys.com, an online electronics retailer. Lewis is creator and Editor-in-Chief of Anvil, a free monthly e-zine and is an adjunct professor at Portland State University. He speaks regularly on emarketing-related topics at industry conferences like Search Engine Strategies. Lewis sits on the board for Portland Advertising Federation and is actively involved in local charitable organizations. He recently founded Anvil’s Annual Get SMART Gala event to raise awareness for children’s literacy. Lewis received Portland Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 Award in 2004.
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