Archive for April, 2008
Next Entries »Domain and Page Naming Tricks for Better SEO Results
Monday, April 21st, 2008The importance of domain and page naming is obvious, but you might not have realized the connection to SEO. We all know that unless our domain name is highly recognizable and memorable then we won’t get many customers, but good domain names also matter when it comes to search engine rankings – the more relevant your domain is to your keywords, the higher it will be ranked.
Domain names are not that difficult to come by at this point. Godaddy.com puts out some great prices and they run all sorts of specials once you become a customer. The more domains that you buy the more that they like you. The basic concept here is that people who buy a few domain names are probably going to become pretty big on the internet. The more that you own the more powerful you are. Domain names are like land in the early eighteenth century. They are valuable and the owners become a sort of elite class on the internet.
The value of domains is difficult to determine until you have purchased one and worked with it for a while. The difference between owning your own domain name and hosting your site on a sub domain or in a subdirectory of a domain is huge. The impact on your ability to perform SEO operations increases drastically simply by the ease of clarifying your URL for the search engines and directories that you submit to.
There are even directories out there that do not except anything except for domains. These are the kind of elitist sites that I described earlier. Domain names are the only way to go if you want to have a seriously successful website that becomes a household name. Directories that do not allow non-domain names are there to protect an investment. If you have spent money on purchasing and hosting a domain name you probably aren’t to excited about seeing sites that haven’t dropped a dime on investment being rated above you. This is a sort of aristecratic mind set, but it is a natural tendency of the mind. There are plenty of directories out there that everybody is able to access, but there are some out there that are only for the elite sites of the internet.
This elitist attitude towards domain names is beneficial to your sites because it allows you to get an edge on other sites simply by buying a domain name. This investment is the most crucial SEO investment that you can make. There are very few sites around that get huge numbers of hits (10,000+ per month) without having their own domain name.
So what do you need to do to get these good rankings? Start off by choosing a domain that matches your website well, and you’re killing two birds with one stone. Your domain name and URL should reflect what you’re trying to accomplish from your site. For example: calling your website ‘thewebcorporation.com’ isn’t much good if it sells hot sauce. For hot sauce, deserthotsauce.com would be a better name – the desert’s hot, like the sauce! Don’t settle for anything that won’t make people want to come to your site. Using the name of your company for your domain name is also a good way to go. This is the fastest way of providing a good, quality description of what the visitor is going to. Many visitors will actually consider your domain name the name of your company anyway so you might as well name yourself something that you want to be called.
Most webmasters settle for safe, can't-go-wrong www.myname.com domains, because it takes time to be creative and think up good names that contain your keywords. You might consider getting some help from the people around you, as you never know what they might be thinking that could be great. You need to come up with a few ideas in case some are taken – you’ll be surprised just how many domains have gone.
Everyone always wants a .com, but you shouldn’t rule out .net, .org, .us and the rest. For example, if deserthotsauce.com is taken, you might find that people like deserthotsauce.us just as much.
Explode Your Website Traffic With Simple Niche Articles
Monday, April 21st, 2008For your internet business to be successful, you need to get large amounts of targeted traffic to your website, and internet marketers have found some pretty ingenious ways of driving targeted traffic to their websites, including pay-per-click campaigns, SEO (search engine optimization), email marketing and ezine advertising. Many marketers, however, have neglected a simple top quality method of driving traffic to their sites: writing short 400 word articles and submitting them so they appear all over the internet.
Don't be mislead into thinking this is a waste of time, having your articles appear on lots of different websites helps you in two major ways:
1) Each article provides a link back to your website. If the content of the article matches the content of the web page you set the article link to, the search engines will deem this a relevant link. The more relevant links you get to your website, the higher it will be ranked in the search engines. The higher your site is ranked in the search engines, the more traffic you will receive.
2) People who use the search engines are looking for information, and if they come across one of your articles, and while reading the article find the content interesting and helpful, they will be inclined click on the link to your website so they can continue their research. The more places you can find to display your articles, the more people will find and read them and the more traffic you will get to your website.
What should your articles consist of? Nothing fancy, each article should be around 400 words long and contain just enough content to:
- Give the reader some useful information.
- Interest an ezine editor enough to want to publish your article.
- Get the readers interest raised to the point they want to click on the link to your website to get more information.
Your article could be:
- One or two tips lifted from the info product you are selling from your website.
- Paraphrased information from a particular web page you would like the reader to visit.
- A review of a product you would like the reader to purchase. The link in a review would point to your affiliate page via a link tracker, or to a page on your website where you offer more details.
You don't even have to write your own articles… You can pay a ghost writer to write them for you. To do this, visit websites like Elance.com where you can list details of the articles you want written and find people who are interested in writing them for you. Make it quite clear to the person who writes your articles that you keep the copyright.
Once you have your article ready for distribution, you need to submit to as many places as possible, including these three places:
1. Article Directories. After a quick content check, the directories will then publish your article instantly, and once you submit your content to one of these directories it will begin to be republished all over the internet. People are constantly on the lookout for quality articles, and you can allow them the rights to re-use yours as long as they leave intact the link back to your website contained in the bio at the bottom of the article. Anyone who wants to visit your site can do so by clicking on this link.
2. Ezine Editors. Submitting your articles to popular ezines related to your niche website will get you lots of well-targeted traffic. Many ezines desperately need new good quality content. If you submit an article for publication in one, you will get a lot of publicity in return. Having hundreds or even better, thousands of people reading your articles is always a good way to increase your website traffic.
3. Your Own Article Directory. Many webmasters and ezine publishers don't know that article directories exist. After reading one of your articles they will visit your website and you should prominently display a link to your own articles. The link must make the reader aware that you content is free for use in any website or ezine. For example, use the wording "Get Free Content For Your Ezine" in a link in a very noticeable place on your website.
Do-It-Yourself SEO
Saturday, April 19th, 2008Does the whole idea of Internet marketing intimidate you? Are you thinking of hiring a professional? Well, we’ve got great news for you. It’s really not difficult to do search engine optimization (SEO) yourself – you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once you’ve done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.
Basic SEO is very simple and easy – all it takes is the willingness to put in the work. Once you know the ropes, it’s not that difficult though it can be time consuming. The content of your website the focus of what SEO is all about. Here are the top points to think about when you’re doing it yourself.
1. You will start by registering a domain name, which should reflect what your site about. Keep it short, as long as it’s somehow related to your site. Being more specific can help. You could choose to name the page after one of your products or services, for example. Another method is to get a sub domain of a popular domain. This will generally help you get indexed more quickly though it will not appear quite as professional to your visitors. There is a trade of here, sub domains are quicker (and generally cheaper), but domain names are more memorable, and, in the long run, better for your indexing.
2. The next thing you should look at is your page’s title (i.e. the HTML title tag), which is critical in letting search engines see what the page is about, and is the first item looked at by search engines to determine your relevance. You should put your most important keywords in your title tags – you don’t need to worry about singular or plural forms as search engines account for these changes in most cases. Whatever you do, don't call your home page ‘Home’ – make the title a mini-description of the page.
3. The two primary meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be, but the description tag is still used by some search engines to display information about your website to users and help them decide whether they’ve found what they are looking for. Not all search engines bother with this, though most will put some bearing on it (even if it is minuscule).
For very short descriptions the alt tag can be used. Alt tags let you describe an image or graphic file – they’re the pop-up descriptions that appear when you hover your mouse over a graphic, or when the graphic can’t be downloaded for whatever reason.
Text within comment tags is never displayed on the page – it is used by coders and designers to remind them of what that part of the page is for. Some coders used to put lots of keywords in the comment tags, so that they would be seen by search engines but not users, but search engines have now stopped paying attention to any text that isn’t seen by the user. Keep this in mind when trying to post invisible text (i.e. white text on a white background). This kind of behavior can get you banned from a search engine.
4. Having keyword density in all of your content is good, but keep in mind that each search engine has its own requirements when it comes to how many times that a keyword or phrase should be in the content for the page to be relevant. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent is a roughly optimal level – but this isn’t always possible, and you shouldn’t force it. Don’t overdo it, or the search engines might mark you down.
5. Many search engines judge web page importance on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. You should link to some related sites, but not too many. Don’t overdo incoming links either, and keep them related your site’s content. It’s also good to get sites to use your keywords as the text of these links.
If you follow the advice above, you can do it yourself and do fine. SEO, if done right, can keep you on top for as long as you want to be.
Don’t let Poor Customer Service Kill Your Business
Friday, April 18th, 2008One of the quickest ways to kill your internet business, or any business for that matter, is to offer poor customer service. When people take the time to complain about some part of your product or service they will have been stewing away for a while before they decided to contact you. If they can't get hold of your or you don't respond to their communication, you'll end up with a very angry customer. When that angry customer has had enough and decides to let the world know about your terrible product they'll attract attention like bees to a honey pot.
The last thing you want for your business is bad press. Bad news spreads quicker than good news… People love to have something to gripe about and if that gripe is about your product, you're going to loose sales very quickly.
Before you can decide on a good customer service system, you need to be absolutely certain your product is top quality and will exceed your customer’s expectations. Once you are sure of your product you can be fairly certain that customer service issues will be related to:
- Payment problems.
- The customer purchased the wrong product.
- Installation issues for software products.
- Setup problems for a web service.
- Delivery problems for a physical product.
You need to decide on some basic ground rules for your customer service department. For example:
- Will you handle all customer service issues yourself, or will you hire somebody to do it for you?
- How quickly will you reply? If it is going to be longer than a few hours, you need to send an immediate email acknowledging the issue and stating that you will reply within 12, 24 or 48 hours, what ever you decide on.
Next you need to decide on the actual method you will use to receive and reply to customer service issues. The three most popular customer support systems are:
1) Normal Email.
As part of your website you could have a web page with your contact details and simply state your email address as one of the methods to get hold of you.
Bear in mind that email harvesting programs will get your email address and over time you will be inundated with spam. To get around this you could use a small graphic which contains your email address, or you could display it in this format: "me [AT] mywesite.com" with a note to your customers to replace [AT] with @.
Another point to consider is using a unique email address for customer service issues. You don't want to mix this email with any other accounts, keep it separate so you can keep track of it.
2) Feedback scripts.
There are simple feedback scripts which are freely available online and which allow your customers to contact you without you having to display an email address anywhere on your website. Your email address will not even be embedded in hidden form fields or other HTML tags.
These scripts allow you to use a form on a contact page into which your customer can enter their contact details and the nature of their customer service issue. The script will then email these details to your email address.
While these scripts are more secure than leaving your email address visible on a web page, they don't offer a means of tracking support issues.
3) Help Desk scripts.
By far the most professional method of providing effective customer support is to use a help desk system. Your customer will have to open an account before they can log a support request which eliminates most non-genuine support issues. After opening an account, they can log a support issue which is automatically given a unique identification and the details stored in a database. The customer is immediately sent an email explaining that their support issue has been logged and they can expect a reply in 12, 24, or 48 hours, or whatever time span you set.
The beauty of a help desk support system is that even if your email fails for some reason, you won't miss any support requests. All you have to do is login to your support desk administration panel and all the unanswered support requests received will be displayed. Your task is then to answer each support issue and the system will automatically mark the issue as closed.
Advanced Link Checks.
Thursday, April 17th, 2008View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don’t enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.
CSS won’t give you many problems. If you are going to use CSS, it is best to link to it from another source. Create a separate CSS page and use the <link> tag to work it into the head of your HTML. This method will keep your file size down considerably, and since you will probably be using the same CSS on several pages, decrease your bandwidth usage. Normally a large quantity of CSS within the document isn’t indicative of any suspicious behavior on the part of the linker. If you feel that you are, indeed, suffering from the fact that the site uses such an excessive proportion of CSS on the page itself, suggest to the webmaster that he/she may want to create an external CSS document and link to it in his/her header.
Check that you're still on the domain you clicked on a link to, and you haven't moved to another site or a subdomain. Some people will move you to another domain while telling that’s their site and your link is there, relying on you not checking the address bar. This trick is all too common and happens to folks who are new to SEO every single day. This sad fact will continue until people begin to catch it every time.
If the domain has changed, delete your backlink to the site in question immediately and then email the webmaster with your complaint. If the webmaster does not fix the problem you may even want to request that they remove the link as the site may wind up discredited as a link farm or some such thing that you do not want to be associated with for fear of being banned from many popular search engines with technology used to combat link farms.
On a related subject, when you check your back links, make sure that these links appear in legitimate places. If the site is completely dedicated to linking to other sites and doesn’t seem to be a directory or something similar you will want to get your link removed as soon as possible. There is no time when one link is worth the risk of being permanently banned from any popular search engine. Aside from the traffic that you will lose from that one search engine, you may wind up “red flagged” so to speak. It seems to be common practice among search engines that if one finds faulty activity the rest seem to find out soon afterwards.
Overall, if it seems dodgy, leave it alone. It’s better to sacrifice one link in caution than to destroy your site’s rankings by accepting one you’re not sure of. There are hundreds of situations aside from link farms that can and will give you trouble. It would be impossible to list every scam as there are people who make their living (or seem to anyway) in creating and executing these scams. Whenever there is a new form of “SEO” technology that “can’t fail,” you should watch out because it is almost guaranteed to blow up in your face. The only truly powerful and guaranteed method of SEO is to make your site valuable to your visitors and then let it fall where it may in the realm of the search engine.
It is difficult, after you have optimized your pages and submitted them to search engines and directories, to sit back and wait, but there is not much that can be done aside from attempting to accumulate links from good, solid places. The work that you have done is bound to pay off sooner or later as long as you stay honest. When it comes to the world of SEO, honesty is, indeed, the best policy.
A Guide to SEO Resources and Discussion Groups.
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Finding the right SEO tools and resources can be challenging – but we’re here to make it a little easier on you. SEO forums and newsgroups can be very confusing to a person with no SEO experience. These forums and newsgroups are just so heavily populated that they can intimidate many new users.
The first rule regarding these situations is to just slowly try to integrate yourself into the community. Follow these rules closely and concisely so that you do not offend anybody:
1. Do not spam the forum with your problems. If you have a few things that you would like to discuss you will probably get help, but do not try to hog all of the assistance for yourself. For one thing, most of your questions have already been answered, believe it or not. There is generally a “search” option. Always use this before posting your problem.
2. Do not “Flame.” Flaming is a term used among forum dwellers to describe the behavior of “yelling” at people via the forum. This is generally associated with cursing, constant argument, typing in all caps to try to convey anger, and dismissing other people’s posts in an undignified fashion. There are other problems that are included in flaming, but I have given you the jist of it.
3. Never take a post off topic. If there is something that you would like to discuss that was inspired by a post on another topic, post a new topic in the appropriate board and explain where the topic was conceived. You may still want to reply to the post just to let people know that the topic has been created so that somebody else doesn’t take it off topic.
4. Do not “bump” your thread (or post). Bumping a post is when you reply to your own post in hopes of getting a response sooner. The only time that this is acceptable is if your thread has laid dormant for about a week. Bumped threads are very annoying to most forum users. Bumping posts on a regular basis will probably lead to a lack of interest in your posts and will probably contribute to a lack of support in your ventures.
6. Be friendly. There is no reason that you can’t be completely polite when posting on a forum. You will get very good response if you are simply polite in your post. Politeness in the world of forums includes making sure that you have communicated your problem carefully so that people attempting to help you can understand and provide answers to the best of their abilities.
7. Join in on the community favorites. Many forums now include “games” which are occasionally pretty fun. They are pretty much just there for if you are bored and waiting for a response to your other posts, but they are enjoyable if you keep up with them as many forum dwellers are quite articulate and witty.
Here’s a list of resources that you can use when you need help but you don’t want to pay for it.
Finding Groups.
Google makes discussion groups easy to find with their ‘Google Groups’ tool (groups.google.com). Go there and type in ‘seo’ to see what’s on offer. Two popular groups are alt.internet.search-engines and alt.www.webmaster. If you don’t like Google’s groups, try Yahoo’s instead (groups.yahoo.com). Either of these sources will provide you with a pretty substantial list. Remember, regular search engine listings seem to apply here so generally you will see the best results towards the top of the listing.
dmoz.org is a good place to start: from their home page, you can browse down to any subject you want, and you should find at least one mailing list, discussion forum or message board in the listing.
There are several forums out there on the web that focus on SEO, and you can learn a lot from all of them, even if some of the discussions are over your head at first. Even ordinary searchers can learn a lot from following these discussions, as they tell you a lot about how search engines work.
Here are some useful forums: WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums, ThreadWatch, Best Practices Search Engine Forums, cre8asite forums and the High Rankings Forum. Check them out.
An Introduction to Niche Marketing.
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008What's all this hubbub about niche marketing? Why is every successful marketer preaching niche marketing as being vital to your profitability as a marketer online or offline?
In answer to that, let's paint a little picture… Imagine you have an idea for a great product, an idea so great you decide to turn it into a product and sell it. You're going to make millions so you labor away hour after hour creating a masterpiece, well… It’s a masterpiece in your eyes.
Hours of feverish activity, a month goes past, then another, and finally the great day arrives when you launch your product. You have a superb product and the best sales website on the internet. Another month goes buy, then two and… Not one sale!
In desperation you hire an experienced marketer for their advice, but what they tell you, crushes you…
"You don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of making any sales!"
You see you have picked a massive market to sell to; you are competing against big established suppliers who are seen as experts. The market trusts them because they are well known and have great reputations. It's David against Goliath only David forgot his sling.
If this has happened to you, you're not alone. This little scenario plays itself out day after day. Each month thousands of people find themselves in this situation.
Doesn't it infuriate you to see others seemingly doing exactly what you did, but they make money? From their product launch they bank the profits. Want to know what they did differently?
They found a niche market, created a product specifically for it and they sell that product to that niche only. Don't make the mistake of thinking niche marketing is something new, savvy marketers have always sold to niches. It's only recently that niche marketing has been so heavily publicized.
Niche marketing is the process of finding small profitable segments of a much larger market and involves a lot more effort. Established suppliers to larger markets are usually not prepared to spend this time and effort required to seek out smaller segments, leaving them ripe for the picking.
One way of explaining the niche marketing concept is to picture a tree – it has a big trunk which leads to branches leading to even smaller branches and finally tiny twigs. Take the topic of fishing which can be likened to the trunk of the tree having branches leading away from it including:
- Deep Sea Fishing
- Salt Water Fishing
- Game Fishing
- Fresh Water Fishing
The smaller branches leading from Fresh Water Fishing include:
- Fishing Baits
- Bass fishing
- Fly Fishing
The tiny twigs leading from Fly Fishing include:
- Trout Fishing
- Steelhead Fishing
- Fly Tying
This is a good example of niche marketing because people who fish tend to be nuts about the subject. Drill all the way down to the tiny segment of Steelhead fishing and there are still avid enthusiasts who will go to any expense to catch the "big one", including buying books or e-books.
One point worth noting is that any book or e-book on Steelhead Fishing had better be full of useful advice (i.e. the advice works), so you had better be an expert and know what you're talking about if you intend to write one…
Finding niche markets is not as easy or obvious as you might think. Sitting down with a piece of paper and drawing a tree listing all your ideas is NOT the way to go. You are listing your ideas… your ideas won't sell!
You need to find what your potential customers want, and to do this you need to conduct some research, here are a few ideas to get you started:
1) Visit a few online forums related to your interests. Take note of the questions people are asking and how many times similar questions are asked.
2) Visit a few book stores and go to the magazine section. Take note of the types of magazines on sale. Ask the sales assistant which magazines sell the most.
3) Take a look on eBay and spend some time going through the categories related to your interest. Take note of popular items and how often they sell.
By finding a small segment of a much larger market in which people are actively buying, and where there are not too many competitors, is the best chance you have of making money from selling your own product.