SEO to Pay or Not to Pay

November 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Organic Search Engine Optimization — To Pay or Not to Pay?

Organic search engine optimization is actually a redundant term. Search engine optimization naturally brings about organic, natural traffic. Beyond that you often hear the question of organic versus paid traffic. Understanding the difference between the two of these will help you in your Internet marketing career, and in deciding what to focus on as you promote your website.

The organic search results are those that are naturally found in search engines listings like Google. They appear there because the search engine found your site good enough to include and relevant enough to related terms that people are searching for.

Paid traffic is just that — traffic you pay for. This is usually in the form of pay per click, which can also be found on search engines like Google. Have you ever done a search and found advertisements down the right hand side of the search results? The chances are probably good that you have — and if you haven’t you can go ahead and check it now. People bid on search terms with the hopes that people will click their ads to get to their website.

There are pros and cons to both methods. Organic methods can take quite a long time to show results. On the flipside, paid traffic can start coming within just a few minutes. Many people pay for traffic at first to see if it is traffic that converts (or, brings in money). When they are sure it will, they use search engine optimization techniques to increase their profits.

Deciding whether you want to go with organic SEO techniques first or not can be a difficult decision. This will depend on if you have the funds for paid traffic or if you’d rather start out more slowly with your marketing. On the other hand, if you have the investment capital to get started, you can easily find out if it is worth going for organic traffic or if the search term you are considering targeting is not going to be worth it.

When you are ready to focus on organic methods, here are some tips you’ll want to follow through with:

Make use of your meta tags, including keywords and description areas. There is some debate on the effectiveness of these tags, but they can certainly help your rankings and do not hurt them, according to many experts.

Use quality content that focuses on one keyword and includes related keywords for semantic latent indexing reasons as well. This will tell the search engines what your content is about so they can more easily rank you for that term.

Focus on getting backlinks. While many issues regarding search engine optimization are fuzzy, experts agree that the more backlinks you have (that are high quality) the more highly you tend to rank.

Filed Under: Blog, SEO

Website Structure Basic of SEO

November 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Writing search engine friendly content helps your potential customers find you through a search engine. Most search engines use software “spiders” to comb the Web for the most relevant sites, and one way they determine a site’s value is by its written content. The spiders are searching the content for keywords or the words that people type in to the search engines that relate to a particular topic. The good news is that spiders, like your site visitors, are attracted to short, easy-to-understand text that is relevant to what you are selling. By organizing the relevant information about your site — the page titles, descriptions, etc. — you’ll make it easier for search engines to find and rank you appropriately.

Web Page Titles Your site’s title, which appears at the top of the browser window, is the first piece of text users — and spiders — will read. Search engines use title tags to get information about your site and help determine rank in search results pages. Your home page title should be short and include your business name and its function, if it’s not clear from the name alone. For example, if you sell watches, the title of your home page could be “Smith’s Online Watch Store.” Giving each page a unique, descriptive title will help searchers find what they are looking for. For example, if you sell shoes and your web site has a page that lists only basketball shoes, a good title for that page might be “Basketball Shoes for All Sizes.” That particular page, instead of your home page, would also be listed on the results page, so users can go directly there from their search.

Meta Tags Your site’s meta tags are similar to the title tags, but are not displayed at the top of a browser’s window. These tags explain the web page’s content and store keywords for search engines, which helps in the ranking process. Also, the text in the meta tags will be used as the descriptor on a search engine’s results page, just below the link to your site. For example, if the title of your site is “Smith’s Online Watch Store,” your meta tags could read, “Buy casual, dress, and athletic watches.”

This would appear on the search engine’s results pages as:
Smith’s Online Watch Store
Buy casual, dress, and athletic watches. 
www.smithswatches.com

Meta tags don’t impact the display of your site to visitors, but because search engines do use them to create the descriptive text that accompanies search results, they need to be as clear as the rest of your site’s content. When writing meta tags, you should:

  • Use your keywords in the description , but keep them limited so you do not appear to be spamming the search engine.
  • Limit the description to 250 words in length.
  • Write for people, not spiders. The best sites are the ones that provide the highest quality user experience.

Home Page The copy on your home page is your first opportunity to attract spiders and sell to customers. You should write content that supports the keywords and phrases that initially led customers to your site and use your keywords at least three or four times. Some search engines pick up text from the top of your home page to create a description of your site instead of using your meta tags, so make sure to include catchy phrases and keywords that will appear on the top portion of the screen. This also is important for users who visit your site — they shouldn’t have to scroll down to find the most relevant content.

Category and Subcategory Pages These pages allow you to organize your products or services in a logical way, help users locate exactly what they are looking for, and bring customers directly from a search engine to the product they want to buy. Headers, products, and special offers placed at the top of the page will increase visibility with both spiders and shoppers. For example, on your sneakers page, a “Free Shipping on Sneakers” ad near the top of the page will help entice customers, but it will also make it easier for spiders to find your keywords because they won’t have to scan as much content. Keep in mind that spiders can’t read content embedded in graphics or flash so be sure to use plain HTML text when placing the copy on the page.

The Benefit of Writing Search Friendly Content 
Your ultimate goal is, of course, to communicate with and sell to your customers. Writing search engine-optimized content helps achieve that goal by making it easier for search engines and customers to find you. Sprinkling your keywords throughout both your site’s text and meta tags is one way to get noticed by search engines. And it helps potential customers find exactly what they’re looking for.

Filed Under: SEO

Natural Search Engine Optimization

February 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Believe it or not, there is a lot of manipulation that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to ranking highly for desired search terms. Despite the trickery, natural search engine optimization is a much better route to take as the results will likely be longer lasting. Before we delve into the great ways to increase your rankings, it’s important to discuss the less than desirable methods that can lead you astray.

The first thing you want to stay away from is much of the automated software. While it certainly is the Internet marketing dream to make money without having to lift a finger, many of the automated techniques are simply spam and clutter and are quickly discovered by the search engines. This includes auto scraped content that doesn’t even make sense much less draw readership to it! You can find yourself dropped out of the search rankings faster than you probably thought possible by using such junk content. Hands-off is not always the best way!

Another thing to stay away from is automated blog commenting. There is the caveat that some people find this useful to quickly find the latest blog posts to comment on. There are some uses that are probably okay (like that one), but for the most part you should steer clear of it. Blog owners can tell when the content is not related and will not allow your comments to begin with. Even though this is a hands-off effort, it is completely wasted.

Now for the methods you SHOULD use! The absolute best way to make use of natural search engine optimization is to create quality content. That way you will become well known within the niche and people will naturally link to you. This is what Google and other search engines want to see!

They want to see consistent readership by way of quality content. Every time another website links to you, it is considered to be a vote for your website. If you consistently have good content that gets linked to, it will be clear that you have a lot of votes and you’ll start to rank highly. This is where the true hands-off earning comes in!

There are other methods that are considered to be more natural and are okay in the eyes of many marketers. These are not completely natural as there is some manipulation of the rankings according to the most “pure” marketers. This includes exchanging links with other people, writing articles for more backlinks, and submission to directories. You’d be hard-pressed to find a popular site that doesn’t utilize a least some of these techniques.

Natural search engine optimization techniques can get you a lot further than manipulative and automated testing. You’ll get longer lasting results, which is worth your time and can bring you have a lot more money in the long run.

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Filed Under: Blog, Learning Center, SEO

Search Engine Optimization — Google Knows Best

February 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Many people agree that if you want to make it online with your website, you need to understand search engine optimization “Google style.” The fact is that Google is the top search engine and controls most of the market share among all the search engines. The problem is that they do not disclose how their algorithm ranks websites, so it takes expert testing as well as your own trial and error to figure it out.

If you are just starting out marketing your website, it is important to focus on the things that we know to be true about ranking highly in Google. These are time-tested tips and techniques that people have discovered.

The honest truth is that there is no magic bullet that will make you rank highly for incredibly competitive terms. Factors that seem to be prevalent for websites that rank highly for those kinds of terms almost always have:

Quality content
Consistent content
A lot of backlinks and quality websites
An “aged” domain

Any newbie marketer might be intimidated by this list. At the same time, all you have to realize is that Google’s main goal is to provide the best search engine experience to their visitors as they possibly can. It starts with quality content! Even if you are the newest of the new, this is something you can do. Make it your mission to create a website that will stand the test of time.

Google also tries to present up-to-the-minute information. You will get extra “points” from the algorithm if you update your site consistently. There is no known time that you need to update by — this is something you’ll need to test for yourself. Many popular bloggers, for instance, blog every day, or at least several times per week. There are other static or product-based websites that update less frequently and still rank highly. This may be specific to the type of website.

The other things are features that build up over time. Take a little time each day, or each week, to get as many back links to your website as possible. This will naturally occur if you have quality content, but you can also take steps to ensure backlinks come through. Comment on blogs, submit articles to article directories, and utilize other linking strategies to ensure these come in consistently.

Google also enjoys aged domains. This means domains that have been around for a few years or more. This might be because there is more chance of there being a lot of content there, but it also has to do with the fact that many people start and abandon websites within a short amount of time. If your website is still up and running, it shows authority in Google’s eyes and you’ll likely get a boost in the rankings because of that.

Following these search engine optimization Google to will certainly help you get started right with your site. Focus on quality and the rewards will come.

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Filed Under: Blog, SEO