"SEO consultants" is a reputable and difficult to get into reviews of UK search engine optimisation companies. General SEO forums, especially paid ones, contain mostly self promoting seo consultants trying to promote their own interest so is probrably a waste of time to entertain such forums.
"Honest SEO" provides the most unbiased view of seo consultants and search engine optimisation companies in the UK and is even licenced under creative commons. The link to this page can be found on the Business 1st resources page on seo.
Bruce Clay offers the Bruce Clay code of ethics standards in seo. Unfortunately one notices that this code of ethics has the company's name on it and is actually just another seo marketing scam that tries to promote one group of people. Included in this code of ethics are the following...
No SEO practitioner will intentionally do harm to a client
No SEO practitioner will intentionally violate any specifically published and enforced rules of search engines or directories
No SEO practitioner will intentionally mislead, harm, or offend a consumer
No SEO practitioner will intentionally violate any laws
No SEO practitioner will falsely represent the content of the client site
No SEO practitioner will falsely represent others work as their own
No SEO practitioner will misrepresent their own abilities, education, training, standards of performance, certifications, trade group affiliations, technical inventory, or experiences to others.
No SEO practitioner will participate in a conflict of interest without prior notice to all parties involved. T
No SEO practitioner will set unreasonable client expectations.
All SEO practitioners will offer their clients both internal and external dispute resolution procedures.
All SEO practitioners will protect the confidentiality and anonymity of their clients with regards to privileged information and items implying testimonial support for the SEO practitioner.
All SEO practitioners will work to their best ability to increase or retain the rankings of client sites.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Limits to onpage optimisation
There is a limit asto how far you can optimise the text on a page. While good quality inbound links to a webpage has no upper range limit, the number of text you have on a page and the number of keywords you place on a page can only go so far before it stops helping and starts harming your search engine rank and spoiling the look of the page.
The spam probability of a page's keyword density is determined using statistical functions by finding the normal distribution of the keyword on webpages. The normal distribution of a particular set of keywords amongst all webpages that use those keywords will determine the webpages that are flagged as spam and webpages that are not. The number of keywords that appear on a page has to be approximately normal against all webpages with that keyword. However, the distribution of the keyword in the same website does not need to be of that same normal. In other words, it has to correspond to a bell curve.
But using valid markup, and using common sence on page optimisation such as correct usage of meta data is still important in SEM. Some people practice search engine optimisation without regard to aesthetics and thier content pages, products pages and static pages are mostly just lists of keywords. In the extreme cases it will eventually result in a spam flag if it falls significantly out of the range of normal distribution. Sometimes clients who are unable to produce content for content pages send in a list of keywords and join them together into non sensical but grammatical sentences. Even if such textual content passes a spam test, a customer that sees such a page will be less likely to buy a product from such a site if they enter that site through such a page becuase no one likes websites that spam. Traffic generated from spammy seo will not convert into sales.
Classic and safe on page improvements for internet marketing include...
* Heading tags: Use headings in the right places for primary keywords. You can improve the appearence of headings using CSS to blend it more gracefully to the rest of the page.
* Title and meta tags: Use title and meta tags to place the webpage's primary keywords. The navigation should also have keywords used in anchor text. However the meta tags need to be different for every page otherwise, by the very definition of meta, pages with exactly the same meta data will be flagged duplicate.
* In long pages, break the page up into groups and subgroups using a corresponding heading level such as 1, 1.1, and 1.1.1. Make sure to use paragraph tags instead of line breaks or divisions. If the paragraph is very short then that is the only situation when it is OK to bold or italic the entire paragraph.
* Placing all content within heading tags is spam. Only use headings where appropriate. Headings should also not be bolded because they are already bold by default. This is similarly so for keywords used throughout the page.
* Some SEO companies like to divide the page in such a way that the body text appears before the navigation links so that all the content appears before the navigation at the top of the page. However the effect of this is small and it is more important in practice to make sure that keywords appear normally in the order of the words used in actual content of the page instead of spending time on the visual layout of the page.
The spam probability of a page's keyword density is determined using statistical functions by finding the normal distribution of the keyword on webpages. The normal distribution of a particular set of keywords amongst all webpages that use those keywords will determine the webpages that are flagged as spam and webpages that are not. The number of keywords that appear on a page has to be approximately normal against all webpages with that keyword. However, the distribution of the keyword in the same website does not need to be of that same normal. In other words, it has to correspond to a bell curve.
But using valid markup, and using common sence on page optimisation such as correct usage of meta data is still important in SEM. Some people practice search engine optimisation without regard to aesthetics and thier content pages, products pages and static pages are mostly just lists of keywords. In the extreme cases it will eventually result in a spam flag if it falls significantly out of the range of normal distribution. Sometimes clients who are unable to produce content for content pages send in a list of keywords and join them together into non sensical but grammatical sentences. Even if such textual content passes a spam test, a customer that sees such a page will be less likely to buy a product from such a site if they enter that site through such a page becuase no one likes websites that spam. Traffic generated from spammy seo will not convert into sales.
Classic and safe on page improvements for internet marketing include...
* Heading tags: Use headings in the right places for primary keywords. You can improve the appearence of headings using CSS to blend it more gracefully to the rest of the page.
* Title and meta tags: Use title and meta tags to place the webpage's primary keywords. The navigation should also have keywords used in anchor text. However the meta tags need to be different for every page otherwise, by the very definition of meta, pages with exactly the same meta data will be flagged duplicate.
* In long pages, break the page up into groups and subgroups using a corresponding heading level such as 1, 1.1, and 1.1.1. Make sure to use paragraph tags instead of line breaks or divisions. If the paragraph is very short then that is the only situation when it is OK to bold or italic the entire paragraph.
* Placing all content within heading tags is spam. Only use headings where appropriate. Headings should also not be bolded because they are already bold by default. This is similarly so for keywords used throughout the page.
* Some SEO companies like to divide the page in such a way that the body text appears before the navigation links so that all the content appears before the navigation at the top of the page. However the effect of this is small and it is more important in practice to make sure that keywords appear normally in the order of the words used in actual content of the page instead of spending time on the visual layout of the page.
Friday, 25 April 2008
Future Search Engines
The current trend of search engines, especially google, is to provide a more localised search with improved context awareness provided through through the semantic web framework. The affect this has on search engine optimisation will be to offer more techniques in which to provide such information to those search engines.
Localisation and context improvments in search engine rankings involves trying to better anticipate the person's needs. Google currently does this by offering the option to save search history and then offers up suggestions based on the statistics you have provided through google history. The semanitc web involves using a number of languages to improve the quality of indexing websites more accurately and quickly. Currently Yahoo is the only major search engine that uses Semantic Web protocols.
The ability of google to provide local search information based on the user's location settings is also an attempt to improve the localisation of SERPS. Google maps is the best example of this with
Business 1st appearing on the Lancaster, UK map together with business-1st address, website and telephone number information. This type of geotargeting is also possible without use intervention by the search engine performing an IP lookup and prioritising websites based in the UK for searchs originating from the UK. This is also used to serve PPC (pay per click) internet marketing that is targeted at specific locations.
Google prefers the use of IP lookups to determine the location of a website because many websites (such as business 1st) use ".com" TLDs. But even IP lookups are not effective if the webpage is also hosted in a foreign country.
Context and personalisation of the search engine results was started by google with its personalised homepage and web history options. It means that a different set of results will appear in SERPS if you use the service compared to if you do not use the service. Microsoft also made a similar copy of google's Web History and Google Desktop Search in what was called "What I've Seen" which was then integrated into Windows Desktop Search and now evolved to PHLAT.
The semantic web is an attempt to add an extra layer of protocols to provide more data about webpages. Yahoo was the first to read RDF Site Summery (RSS) files and Yahoo Pipes uses XML based RSS feeds from websites. Atom is the google version of RSS feeds which is intended to provide structured data about websites. This is useful for keeping up to date with new products available on ecommerce online shop websites for example.
A setback to personalised search engine results is the privacy concerns, especially with regards to the recent cases of the UK government loosing sensitive personal information stored electronically. But as more people start using personalised search, search engine optimization companies will have to start offering products such as RSS and RDS Site Summaries.
Localisation and context improvments in search engine rankings involves trying to better anticipate the person's needs. Google currently does this by offering the option to save search history and then offers up suggestions based on the statistics you have provided through google history. The semanitc web involves using a number of languages to improve the quality of indexing websites more accurately and quickly. Currently Yahoo is the only major search engine that uses Semantic Web protocols.
The ability of google to provide local search information based on the user's location settings is also an attempt to improve the localisation of SERPS. Google maps is the best example of this with
Business 1st appearing on the Lancaster, UK map together with business-1st address, website and telephone number information. This type of geotargeting is also possible without use intervention by the search engine performing an IP lookup and prioritising websites based in the UK for searchs originating from the UK. This is also used to serve PPC (pay per click) internet marketing that is targeted at specific locations.
Google prefers the use of IP lookups to determine the location of a website because many websites (such as business 1st) use ".com" TLDs. But even IP lookups are not effective if the webpage is also hosted in a foreign country.
Context and personalisation of the search engine results was started by google with its personalised homepage and web history options. It means that a different set of results will appear in SERPS if you use the service compared to if you do not use the service. Microsoft also made a similar copy of google's Web History and Google Desktop Search in what was called "What I've Seen" which was then integrated into Windows Desktop Search and now evolved to PHLAT.
The semantic web is an attempt to add an extra layer of protocols to provide more data about webpages. Yahoo was the first to read RDF Site Summery (RSS) files and Yahoo Pipes uses XML based RSS feeds from websites. Atom is the google version of RSS feeds which is intended to provide structured data about websites. This is useful for keeping up to date with new products available on ecommerce online shop websites for example.
A setback to personalised search engine results is the privacy concerns, especially with regards to the recent cases of the UK government loosing sensitive personal information stored electronically. But as more people start using personalised search, search engine optimization companies will have to start offering products such as RSS and RDS Site Summaries.
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Article Submissions and Website Reviews
Becomming an authority on the type of product that you are selling is an excellent way to gain traffic to your site. This is especially so if the area that you are in is relatively new and not much competition alrady exists for it.
The type of content that can turn your site into an authority on the subject include giving away tips and tricks, news, resources directories and articles.
Articles can be submitted at a number of sites includeing buzzle, ideamarketers, ebooksnbytes, thewhir and ezinearticles. Blogs are also good places to submit articles although they are not as highly weighted by search engines due to their infiltration by spammers in the past. This is particularly true of wordpress.
Writing reviews and testimonals for other similar webpages is also a good way in which to become authoritative. But only promote sites that are of good quality. Another twist that is used by some seo companies is to write only about negative aspects about other sites. Its probrably much more difficult to say good things about people who do a good job than it is to say bad things about people who do a poor job at their profession. Testimonals and reviews are better regarded if they are promoting rather than discrediting as the former is more useful to their respective industries.
The type of content that can turn your site into an authority on the subject include giving away tips and tricks, news, resources directories and articles.
Articles can be submitted at a number of sites includeing buzzle, ideamarketers, ebooksnbytes, thewhir and ezinearticles. Blogs are also good places to submit articles although they are not as highly weighted by search engines due to their infiltration by spammers in the past. This is particularly true of wordpress.
Writing reviews and testimonals for other similar webpages is also a good way in which to become authoritative. But only promote sites that are of good quality. Another twist that is used by some seo companies is to write only about negative aspects about other sites. Its probrably much more difficult to say good things about people who do a good job than it is to say bad things about people who do a poor job at their profession. Testimonals and reviews are better regarded if they are promoting rather than discrediting as the former is more useful to their respective industries.
SEO Meta Tags
In search engine optimisation, the meta tags are the meta description and meta keyword tags. The meta tags look like as follows...
The meta keywords tag can be useful for misspelling and similar words not otherwise seen in the main text of the webpage. The meta description tag is used by some search engines including google to display a summary of information about the website in SERPs.
The keywords and description meta tags should be unique according to the page. The description tag should read well to the human and not be too keyword promotional. At the end of the day, a web user will not click to your site if the description on the snippet is stuffed with spam.
There are also other meta tag that tell the search engine what language the page is written in and how many times it should revisit the page. These tags are ignored by most search engines. The only other meta tag that is taken into account by all major search engines is the robots exclusion protocol...
Meta tags are less important that the webpage title, text, and link quality pointing to it and many search engine optimisation consultants do not use them at all.
meta name="keywords" content=""
meta name="Description" content=""
The meta keywords tag can be useful for misspelling and similar words not otherwise seen in the main text of the webpage. The meta description tag is used by some search engines including google to display a summary of information about the website in SERPs.
The keywords and description meta tags should be unique according to the page. The description tag should read well to the human and not be too keyword promotional. At the end of the day, a web user will not click to your site if the description on the snippet is stuffed with spam.
There are also other meta tag that tell the search engine what language the page is written in and how many times it should revisit the page. These tags are ignored by most search engines. The only other meta tag that is taken into account by all major search engines is the robots exclusion protocol...
meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"
Meta tags are less important that the webpage title, text, and link quality pointing to it and many search engine optimisation consultants do not use them at all.
Internet Marketing Keyword Selection
Keywords should define a product when used in search engine optimisation. Therefore it is inadvisible to use generic keywords usch as "cheap" or "free" in your search engine optimisation campaign. Keywords are usually two or five word phrases which people are likely to use to serach for your website. In choosing keywords you should also consider the type of problems that your product solves, and those will make good candidates.
A longer search phrase is also more targeted than single keyword search queries. The more targeted the visitors to your ecommerce website are, then the more likely it is that they will buy something from your online shop site.
Keyword density is not too important. Many search engine optimisation specialists focus so much on keyword density that they end up making their content pages look like spam. More important are the areas that they keyword appears (such as top of page) and the amound of text that exists between each occurrence of each keyword, plus how they relate to the the theme of the page and the pages that link to it.
It is also a good idea to look at the keywords used in competitor websites. Google Suggest offers a related keyword tool that can be used to find new keywords not otherwise considered for the primary keywords of your website. Keywords should bring targetted traffic to your website. Each page of your website should contain one or two primary keywords followed by one or two secondary keywords. You cannot optimise for more than this number of keywords otherwise the page will start to look like spam. It can sometimes help to use common mis-spellings of the keyword in the keywords meta tag of the page.
Some of the less sophisticated search engines will display different results for plural and singular versions of keywords. Therefore it can be helpful to optimise your keywords for both singular and plural forms of your keywords if they are both likely to be used by customers. However, most search engines are not case sensitive. Therefore you do not need to optimise of words that begin with uppercase and lower case.
If your keyword uses a hyphen, it is important to note that search engines will treat hyphens as a space. Therefore "ecommerce websites" will be interpreted differently form "e-commerce websites".
The important thing to remember is that your words must be able to both describe the product that the webpage is trying to sell and to be something that is frequenty searched for.
Digital Point has a free keywords suggestion tool located at "www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion" which is an alternative to Yahoo's overture keywords tool.
A longer search phrase is also more targeted than single keyword search queries. The more targeted the visitors to your ecommerce website are, then the more likely it is that they will buy something from your online shop site.
Keyword density is not too important. Many search engine optimisation specialists focus so much on keyword density that they end up making their content pages look like spam. More important are the areas that they keyword appears (such as top of page) and the amound of text that exists between each occurrence of each keyword, plus how they relate to the the theme of the page and the pages that link to it.
It is also a good idea to look at the keywords used in competitor websites. Google Suggest offers a related keyword tool that can be used to find new keywords not otherwise considered for the primary keywords of your website. Keywords should bring targetted traffic to your website. Each page of your website should contain one or two primary keywords followed by one or two secondary keywords. You cannot optimise for more than this number of keywords otherwise the page will start to look like spam. It can sometimes help to use common mis-spellings of the keyword in the keywords meta tag of the page.
Some of the less sophisticated search engines will display different results for plural and singular versions of keywords. Therefore it can be helpful to optimise your keywords for both singular and plural forms of your keywords if they are both likely to be used by customers. However, most search engines are not case sensitive. Therefore you do not need to optimise of words that begin with uppercase and lower case.
If your keyword uses a hyphen, it is important to note that search engines will treat hyphens as a space. Therefore "ecommerce websites" will be interpreted differently form "e-commerce websites".
The important thing to remember is that your words must be able to both describe the product that the webpage is trying to sell and to be something that is frequenty searched for.
Digital Point has a free keywords suggestion tool located at "www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion" which is an alternative to Yahoo's overture keywords tool.
Website Branding and Domain Names
Your domain name is important for branding purposes. It should contain keywords that reinforce the branding that your site wants to convey.
Another reason to choose they keywords that you use in your domain name carefully is so that it is easier to remember. For example, it is much easier to remember a site "healthstore.uk.com" rather than a site "healthstore-herbal-remedies-vitamin-pills-supplements-uk.com".
Some search engine optimisation companies buy multiple domain names, some which contain less important keywords and to prevent competitors from purchasing that domain. However, it is important not to buy multiple domain names for deceptive purposes. You could for example separate distinct areas of your business across multiple domain names each of which describe that specific area better than your primary domin name. A good example is to buy domain names specific for each country in which your business operates. It makes sence to have multiple similar websites covering different topics so that you can create topically relevant and high quality inbound links to the different sites in your business, and give you a multi branded internet marketing approach.
But, in spite of this, it is important not to fall into black hat search engine optimisation practices whereby you create multiple websites and domain names purely to deceive search engines. Doing so will guarantee that your sites get removed from the major search engines. Black hat seo practices are best avoided if you want to protect your brand and domain name. Make sure that each site is unique enough and only cross link the sites where it is relevant. Use various hosts so that if one of your sites go down then not all of your sites go down. Some search engines devalue links that ocme from sites hosted on the same set of IP addresses. Do not link hundreds of domain names together or else you will be banned for creating a link farm.
When you register your domain name, make sure that you register with an ICANN accredited registrar. Some low quality hosts may place all their domains on a single IP address which normally causes slow speed. That said, it is not usually detremental to seo internet marketing to use shared hosting. Search engines usually place spam flags on domain names and not on IP addresses, except in exceptional circumstances of black hat seo companies such as Search King.
Another reason to choose they keywords that you use in your domain name carefully is so that it is easier to remember. For example, it is much easier to remember a site "healthstore.uk.com" rather than a site "healthstore-herbal-remedies-vitamin-pills-supplements-uk.com".
Some search engine optimisation companies buy multiple domain names, some which contain less important keywords and to prevent competitors from purchasing that domain. However, it is important not to buy multiple domain names for deceptive purposes. You could for example separate distinct areas of your business across multiple domain names each of which describe that specific area better than your primary domin name. A good example is to buy domain names specific for each country in which your business operates. It makes sence to have multiple similar websites covering different topics so that you can create topically relevant and high quality inbound links to the different sites in your business, and give you a multi branded internet marketing approach.
But, in spite of this, it is important not to fall into black hat search engine optimisation practices whereby you create multiple websites and domain names purely to deceive search engines. Doing so will guarantee that your sites get removed from the major search engines. Black hat seo practices are best avoided if you want to protect your brand and domain name. Make sure that each site is unique enough and only cross link the sites where it is relevant. Use various hosts so that if one of your sites go down then not all of your sites go down. Some search engines devalue links that ocme from sites hosted on the same set of IP addresses. Do not link hundreds of domain names together or else you will be banned for creating a link farm.
When you register your domain name, make sure that you register with an ICANN accredited registrar. Some low quality hosts may place all their domains on a single IP address which normally causes slow speed. That said, it is not usually detremental to seo internet marketing to use shared hosting. Search engines usually place spam flags on domain names and not on IP addresses, except in exceptional circumstances of black hat seo companies such as Search King.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Google Adwords
PPC internet marketing campaigns can give you targeted traffic and allow you to test new business models. The pay per click market is competitive and therefore can be more expensive than alternative forms of webpage marketing. A lot of time would need to be spent learning how to create pay per click ads.
Pay per click applications provide tracking software. This is important in order to find out how much each click is worth. If a pay per click campaign is properly targeted and appealing then it can have a high conversion rate. The price that is paid for a click should be based on the profit per order. Therefore it is not worth paying £1 per click for a keyword that will make you only a small profit per order. Some companies pay an extreme premium for branding without actually caring about click through rates.
You can test if the market is available for your product by creating a single webpage about that product, and then count the number of clickthroughs. If you cannot achive a decent amount of click throughs then there is probrably no market for that product or you are choosing the wrong keywords and target audience.Google adwords is the largest pay per click search engine marketing provider alghough yahoo trails close behind. They offer many tracking and targeting features, plus google and yahoo have recently formed a partnership as of 2008 whereby they display each other's ads on each other's homepages. Many smaller pay per click companies will deliver the same product but with a very high bounce rate so that most people who click a link to your site will immedately click the back button on the browser.
With google adwords you pick a maximum bid price and competitors do not have access to your highest bid price. Adverts can be targeted geographically so that they only appear in the country in which your online shop website is located. The price for google adwords is related to the price per click multiplied by click throughs. The google advertising professional program is a program which allows marketers to be certified with adwords. You need to spend a certain amount of money on adwords to be able to get a google advertising certificate logo. Google also offers a service called jumpstart where they will help set up your account for you for a fee.
Link Exchanges
Popular websites tend to be regiestered in reputable directories such as Yahoo Directory or Yell. To determine if a site is really worthy of a link you should evluate their content. In addition you may want to do a backlink check and see how they aquired their inbound links.
It is good from a web optimisation point of view to link to other websites that are relevant to yours if they link back but only if done legitimately. Stay away from credit, loans, medicine, gambling and adult content sites as they will damage your pagerank score and your credibility. If the site you are linking to has nothing to do with the topic of your site and no relation to what may interest your viewers then you should not link to them. And also, if you link to many irrelevant and low quality websites, then it will be unlikely that other good quality websites will want to link to yours. If you send junk link exchange requests they will usually be deleted as spam. You should also delete any email that looks similar to the following...
It is good from a web optimisation point of view to link to other websites that are relevant to yours if they link back but only if done legitimately. Stay away from credit, loans, medicine, gambling and adult content sites as they will damage your pagerank score and your credibility. If the site you are linking to has nothing to do with the topic of your site and no relation to what may interest your viewers then you should not link to them. And also, if you link to many irrelevant and low quality websites, then it will be unlikely that other good quality websites will want to link to yours. If you send junk link exchange requests they will usually be deleted as spam. You should also delete any email that looks similar to the following...
The above invitation has the following hallmarks of spam...Dear Webmaster,
We are marketing *** and we feel that reciprocating it with your site should help increase traffic and also search engine rankings to a certain extent.
We have placed a link to your website over here:-
***
Kindly check the link details and if you need any modifications, please let me know.
I would also appreciate if you link back to my website using this code:-Plavix is used to prevent blood clots which causes arteries to harden or become narrow. It is an anti-platelet agent used to reduce the risk of heart attacks.
I will keep the link active for 7 days. If you are not interested in linking back then we will remove this reciprocal link (to be fair to our other link partners).
Thanks.
- They are mass emails not addressed properly to the site owner but rather taking parts generated from an automated program.
- It requests a link to an offshore drug store
- It provides a link to you from an obscure website which has been banned from google with no pagerank
- The quality of their website is very poor
- They pressure you with a time limit
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Directory Submissions
An important part of search engine optimization and internet marketing is to add your website into as many directories as possible. This is a safe, cheap and effective white hat SEO technique that has been around since the SEM industry began.
B-1st is listed in Yahoo Directory. Yahoo directory is particularly worth submitting a link into in order to get listed on the yahoo search engine. Since yahoo will obviously place higher weight on sites listed in their directory, so it would be expected that a site placed in yahoo directory will improve its ranking on the yahoo search engine.
There are many other directories on the internet. If submitting your website to many directories, it is important to use different text on each directory otherwise the text will be detected as a duplicate and may therefore not be displayed in search results.
If you list your site in many directories then that can be a cheap way to build up links from other sites that point to your site. However, some directories have been removed from google's cache. Many directories show signs of being updated much less frequently in google cache's than before.
Directories that are especially targeted are those that sell paid links purely for link spamming. Yahoo directory and similarly reputable directories remain unaffected by this purge. Another measure of the quality of a directory is its pagerank and if its homepage has a pagerank of zero or is unranked, it would be best avoided.
Nevertheless, even if a link ceases to be counted in google, it may still be worth the time and effort if it means that your website can still be marketed in other search engines like yahoo.
Do not use link exchange directories or directories that require a 3 way link exchange as this can be seen as black hat seo by google and could get your site banned.
Sitemaps
There are two main ways to link to pages from within your site.
- Hierarchical linking is used when some pages are more important than others and the important pages are linked to from all other pages on the site. This has the effect of concentrating pagerank only on the most important pages of the site and in some situations this is desirable.
- Non Hierarchical linking is when all pages are linked to each other and are therefore considered of equal importance. Pagerank would therefore be distributed equally among all pages of the site therefore giving more pages a pagerank but of a lower score. While pagerank does not necessarily determine the page's position on an SERP, it is something that customers may consider when evaluating the reputation of your site.
When performing internal site linking, you need to make sure that you use text links rather than image based or javscript based links. The anchor text should also contain the keyword relevant to that page as this helps to improve google rankings for that keyword.
Very large sites can use a sitemap page from which all the pages of your site can be accessed, and an xml sitemap from which all the pages of your site can be accessed. Google sitemaps and yahoo sitemaps are the best examples of xml sitemaps.
SEO Titles
The use of keyword based webpage titles is very important in search engine optimisation and the modification of your ecommerce website titles may sometimes be all that is needed to improve its internet marketing significantly...
• Titles must not be left blank as that wastes a useful marketing component of your online shop.
• Any welcome messages, branding or other salutations should be placed at the end of the title rather than at the beginning or omitted alltogether. This is because only the initial words are taken into account by search engines when ranking.
• The title should describe its webpage. Avoid placing unrelated keywords in the title as this confuses the customer and can be interpreted as spam.
• Title's should not be duplicated on every page. Each page should have its own specific title describing what that page is about.
• If the domain contains the title's keywords, provided that it is not too long, will assist in the association of that page with that keyword.
• It is sometimes a good idea to mix competitve and non competitive keywords for each page where appropriate.
• It is also a good idea to overlap keywords for example a page that markets search engine optimisation should also have the keywords "Internet Marketing", "seo", and "optimization".
It is always important to make your title and webpage names sensible to the customer. A customer visiting your online shop website will probrably be put off by the presence of irrelevent keywords and excessive keywords used in page titles and page names.
• Titles must not be left blank as that wastes a useful marketing component of your online shop.
• Any welcome messages, branding or other salutations should be placed at the end of the title rather than at the beginning or omitted alltogether. This is because only the initial words are taken into account by search engines when ranking.
• The title should describe its webpage. Avoid placing unrelated keywords in the title as this confuses the customer and can be interpreted as spam.
• Title's should not be duplicated on every page. Each page should have its own specific title describing what that page is about.
• If the domain contains the title's keywords, provided that it is not too long, will assist in the association of that page with that keyword.
• It is sometimes a good idea to mix competitve and non competitive keywords for each page where appropriate.
• It is also a good idea to overlap keywords for example a page that markets search engine optimisation should also have the keywords "Internet Marketing", "seo", and "optimization".
It is always important to make your title and webpage names sensible to the customer. A customer visiting your online shop website will probrably be put off by the presence of irrelevent keywords and excessive keywords used in page titles and page names.
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Keyword Popularity
Choosing keywords are the foundations of your search engine optimsiation effort and you should take time to choose the most important and relevant keywords for your website. A keyword is a word that a search engine user would enter to find your website. Most people enter search phrases that are between 2 to 5 words.
Good keyword phrases are specific and it is better to have a smaller number of targeted keywords rather than have many irrelevant users find your site listed under generic search terms, who will be unlikely to spend much time on your site. Your ultimate objective is to get targeted traffic to your site. There is no reward in being on the first page on google unless those vistors become paying customers.
The more targeted and specific your keywords are, the greater the chance that visitors to your site will find what they are looking for.
This tool will also give an indication asto the popularity of a keyword so that you may know how difficult it will be to rank for it. Less expensive keywords on pay per click will tend to be easier to rank in an organic search.One way to go about choosing your site's keywords is to make a list of all the possible words that your customer may use to find the products and services on your site remembering to think like your customers and avoid using words that your customer are unlikely to use.
Then use google's keyword suggestion tool to help identify the keywords that you should be able to optimise which are not too popular or unpopular. Avoid generic keywords or keywords that are just a single word. So, for example to get a top ranking for "bracelet" you would be competing with millions of other webpages.
After you have narrowed down your keywords to around 20, choose one that will be your most important keyword. Typically this will tend to be your company name. You should ensure that your most important keyword appears on most of the pages of your site. You should also have a number of variations of your primary keyword such as synonyms and alternate spellings and include these in your keywords list. So a primary keyphrase for the bshop site "Health Store UK" should have the primary keywords "Health store UK". Variations of this would be "UK Health Store", "Healthstoreuk", "healthstore UK" etc. Notice how the primary keyword is still present in the more specific pages.
The more specialised and targeting your keyword is, the more targeted your visitors will be and thus the more likelihood that they will purchase a product from your ecommerce website.
2 to 5 word phrases are much easier to rank well for because your competition are unlikely to use the same combination.
It is often a good idea to put a geographic modifier to your keyword such that "health store" becomes "health store uk", provided that your ecommerce website focuses on a particular region or country.
Each page of your website should then contain your primary keyword. Where appropriate, your products pages should contain variations of your primary keyword or the remainder of your choosen keywords. To avoid being marked for spam, you should also use keywords that are appropriate in each individual page. So a page that contains contact details should not contain the keyword "Silver Bangles" for example but more appropriately includ your shop's full name and variations of it where appropriate. It is also important not to stuff webpages with keywords as keyword stuffing is also considered in contravention of google's increasingly strict webmaster guidelines.
Link Building
There are two link building strategies to link to pages from within your site. Hierarchical linking is used when some pages are more important than others and the important pages are linked to from all other pages on the site. This has the effect of concentrating pagerank only on the most important pages of the site and in some situations this is desirable.
Non Hierarchical linking is when all pages are linked to each other and are therefore considered of equal importance. Pagerank would therefore be distributed equally among all pages of the site therefore giving more pages a pagerank but of a lower score. While pagerank building does not necessarily determine the page's position on an SERP, it is something that customers may consider when evaluating the reputation of your site.
When performing internal site linking, you need to make sure that you use text links rather than image based or javscript based links. The anchor text should also contain the keyword relevant to that page. Large sites should incorporate a sitemap page from which all the main pages of your site can be accessed, and an xml sitemap from which all the pages of your site can be accessed.
Friday, 4 April 2008
Outsourcing
Many large services oriented businesses outsource to India, where there is a competitive supply of educated workers who are skilled in IT and fluent in English. The advantage of this approach is that the client company can save costs by freeing up resources such as office space for other activities and leave the personnel department of the third party company to handle recruitment costs. Similarly many manufacturing businesses outsource to the Far East and East Europe which has heavy industries and factories but where English is perhaps not so widely used.
In many cases, the supply of suitably skilled workers is unavailable in the client's host location and therefore the option to outsource to India where there is a more readily available supply of skilled workers would save costs by removing the need to provide training from scratch. In this context, software outsourcing such as web design outsourcing and IT outsourcing is an increasingly popular trend within the software industry in the UK where there is a skills shortage making the cost of hiring an IT professional unaffordable.
IT outsourcing can involve the turning over of responsibility to an outside firm the company's entire IT department such as hosting, maintenance, software development and technical support. However, many companies choose to partially outsource IT functions. The client company may at a later stage choose to have more or fewer departments outsourced.
IT outsourcing can significantly lower the costs to the client's company while matching and often increasing the end product quality, leaving the company better able to anticipate future costs and focus on other key functions. On aggregate, the cost savings made allows the company to expand their services and therefore benefit the economy as a whole.
Online Shop Websites
Any website needs a good navigation structure. Whenever a user is navigating inside a store with more than one sub-level of navigation, it's important to show them where in the site structure they are by using appropriate navigation menus. A site with many items, such as ebay, needs a sort feature. You should at least have a sort option based on price on product pages and search results. Other sort options which can be incorporated include popularity, newness (date of manufacture) and whether or not the item(s) are in stock.
All ecommerce websites should have search functionality. Google offers a paid for service whereby shops can include a search bar into their webpages, without advertisments, for an annual fee. A search feature will save the end user a lot of time when searching for products in a large ecommerce website. Sometimes a person may want to see everything that you sell. A wildcard search function on your website would allow the user the option of seeing every product on one page. This can also be achieved using RSS feeds which people can subscribe to in order to be notified of new products.
It's particularly important for internet shop sites to show pricing and cost savings clearly, but nearly every website can benefit from providing that extra bit of detail before the customer clicks to a product page. The cost of a product is usually the most important factor in deciding whether or not a customer makes a purchase from your site. Customers must also be able to see clearly what the costs of delivery are and what the delivery options are from your online shop website. It is important to be able to offer track and trace and insurance in case something unexpected happens to the package. The UK post office has a no facility for finding lost articles that have not been sent by recorded delivery and you wiill proprably not get a refund for lost items unless it is insured. Keep the customer informed by email or phone when the payment has been received and when the item has been shipped. When you send out an order confirmation, make sure to include all of the product details to reassure the buyer that they've selected the right item and to give the customer the option to fix an incorrect order before the item is shipped.
In addition, the following hardware and software considerations should be adherered to...
- Web hosts needs to be able to store website files on secure servers. Unix based website hosting tends to be more secure than Windows based servers as all version of Windows are more susceptible to viruses than any version of Linux.
- Protection of credit card details from eavesdroppers is needed as the data passes through the internet between the client and the server as indicated by a padlock logo that appears on the browser window. Double click on the padlock and it will give you the website security certificate details.
- Use of a regularly updated anti virus program, spyware program, security updates and patches. Never run a program from a recipient who you do not know and never devulge your password information to anyone claiming to be from business first unless they can be verified.
- The webserver and the network that it is on needs to maintain logs of all activity. This produces an audit trail that can be used to find the source of any attempt to steal sensitive information.
- Fail safe technology such as off site backups is required in case of a catastrophe such as virus or damage to servers and uninterruptible power supply to prevent power cuts from corrupting a transaction in progress.
- Search Engine Optimisation (Improving natural search engine listings)
- Display-Advertising (Buying web banner ads)
- Email-Marketing (Newsletters and Junk Mail)
- Affiliate Marketing (A parent business rewards another affiliate business for each customer brought about by the affiliate-company)
- Interactive advertising (Viral marketing techniques to engage the consumer in a personal way)
- Online reputation management (Similar to webpage marketing except it is for a name or brand, and the optimisation is not a single web site but rather any site that contains only positive references to that name or brand.)
- Social Marketing (blogs, social bookmarking).
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