SEO Daily

Search tags: search engine marketing, ppc search engine internet marketing, search engine marketing firm, search engine marketing services, search engine marketing company, search internet marketing, search engine optimization marketing, professional search engine marketing

Search Engine Marketing: Applying Research to Succeed

If you want to succeed in your search engine marketing efforts, make sure that you base your marketing strategy on research. The better the research, better the results. You not only need to know the preferences of your targeted audience well, but also need to understand the industry and the manner in which your competition operates.

Your initial effort should be focused on understanding the industry you are involved in. Try to gather as much information you can on the product you deal in, such as – the source of the product, how to market it, why potential customers may need it, how to create a demand for the product… Research on these lines will help you in your marketing efforts. You may use many channels available online to further your business. Research efforts can be supplemented with online magazines, newsletters, blogs, and forums. Search the internet for industry leaders and read what they have to say about the industry.

Research about your competition to understand how they operate and what impact they have on the market. Check their website to see what information they provide to visitors. To succeed, it is important to know about your target audience and their preferences, as well. It will help you to learn who buys your products and for what reason. Know about the people who visit your website, and what they are seeking. Make sure that the website contains the information and the products they would buy.  The log statistics report is a great tool to learn who visits your website.

If visitors do not make any purchases, check what is wrong with the landing page. Is the information inadequate? Is the landing page not user-friendly? Is navigation confusing?

You will have to check these factors to ensure success in building a viable search engine marketing strategy.

Search tags: search engines, improve search engine ranking, search engine ranking, title bar, links, link popularity, meta tags, content

Golden Tips to Improve Search Engine Ranking

According to various surveys conducted, shoppers ranging from 80% – 85% use search engines to find products and services they wish to purchase. This fact alone makes it important for websites to improve search engine ranking.  Here are some golden tips to improve search engine ranking of your website.

Title Bar
The title bar is an important issue when it comes to search engine ranking. If you use Internet Explorer, the blue bar at the top of the page is known as the title bar. It has some words written on it that end with the words “- Microsoft Internet Explorer”. Does the title bar carry your company’s name, or worse, does it have the words “untitled” written on it.  To improve search engine ranking of that page, it is important that the title bar contains important keywords relating to your business. Optimally, you may use up to six keywords on the title bar, and not more.

Content
Content has a vital role to play to help improve search engine ranking. Search engines have nothing to do with graphics on your website. For them, text matter that contains keywords that potential customers use over the search engines is of prime importance. If your content does not contain any keywords, the search engines will ignore your website. So, ascertain the keywords that customer use to find your product or services and add those to your content.

If your content is presented as an image, the search engine will ignore it. Click on the left mouse button and hold it down. Now drag it over a text word. If it highlights a word or two, then your text is search engine friendly. If an entire block of words is selected, then your content is presented in graphic form, which the search engines will ignore. Ask your web master to turn your text from graphic to standard HTML text.

Meta Tags
Meta tags are not as important as they are made out to be for the reason that many search engines ignore them. So, they have limited importance in that sense. If you want to confirm that your website has meta tags in place when your home page is active, click on the “view” command on the top bar of your browser window. Select “source” from the drop down menu. Codes will display in a window, which might be incomprehensible to you. Look for a command that says meta name= “description” content= (that will describe your company and products). Another command that needs your attention is meta name= “keywords” content = (it contains the appropriate keywords).  If these are not there, ask your webmaster to add them.

Links
Link popularity is a great way to improve search engine ranking. Search engines place importance on websites that have incoming links from quality and related websites. Apart from improving search engine ranking, these links bring in more potential customers to your website.

Search tags: SEO, search engine optimizing, SERP, meta tag, search engine ranking, website content

SEO: Patience is the Key

You may have done a good job of search engine optimizing your website, yet do not expect it to start showing on the first page of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Many people have wrong notions about the SEO concept or are not aware enough to understand the requirements. A major percentage believes that fixing the meta tag will propel their website on the SERP, but that is not the case.

Search engines go for relevant results, closest to the keyword typed. The meta tag does help the search engine in its quest. For an internal search engine, keywords in the meta tag do help in narrowing down the search to the most relevant pages that a site user is looking for. Internal search engines have to look into a very small number of pages to find the relevant page, and the meta tag and content can be relied upon, since the goal of the web-page content and that of the internal search engine is to provide the information being sought by the user.

External search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, which have to go through an amazing number of web-pages to find the relevant information, do not completely rely on the meta tag. The reason - the website owner’s goals and the search engines’ goals may not necessarily be the same. A website owner’s goal may be merely to up its search engine ranking, where as a search engine’s goal could be to provide relevant information to the user. So, you cannot solely rely on the meta tag to give you quick results.

Your website content may be keyword optimized, but it may still not assure you a quick premier search engine ranking. Generating useful information and website content is a gradual process, which takes time. You build your website over a period and not instantly. Thus, don’t expect to show up in the forefront of the SERP in short time.

You cannot rely on links to catapult your website up the search engine index quickly. If that is your intention, you could end up linking to all the wrong websites. You would rather have genuine links for better results than linking with the intent of improving search engine ranking. 

Using the above techniques, you could search engine optimize your website with the intention of providing genuine information to the user, and not for the sole purpose of jumping ranks. A natural-results website may still take around six to nine months to begin showing results over the Google search engine.

Search tags: text links, search engine ranking, search engine, link popularity

Search Engine Optimization: Text Links
Text links have created quite a stir in the minds of search marketing experts and webmasters. Will they improve your search engine ranking, or result in getting your website banned? Will they help improve your link popularity, or increase the page rank of your website? Do text links have the ability to increase the flow of targeted traffic to your website? These, and many other questions might rankle your mind while on the subject of text links.

On the face of it, buying a text link (read ad) on some other website that directs visitors to your site is an innocent act. There is no harm in advertising your site, and it is your right to do so. Search engines have no qualms if you use links to advertise your website, as it is perfectly legal to advertise your business. 

Then where, you may ask, is the glitch? The problem with text links arises when they are not purchased with the intention to drive targeted traffic to a particular website. Many site owners or webmasters may make an effort to artificially raise the link popularity of the site being advertised. Links might act as a trade off between two webmasters, or an ad. It is not easy to learn the purpose of a link, and that creates problems for search engines. Text linkers normally keep tracking codes off since their web analytics software does not require them. Moreover, people buying an ad may as well get link popularity credits as part of the deal.

Thus, search engines are having problems with their algorithms. It is certainly difficult to tell apart the difference whether it is vote for a site or a paid advertisement. However, search engines can trace from the codes whether they are ads, which requires a lot of work, and thus not pass any link popularity. This way search engines count only the votes and not ads. Thus, your search engine ranking could drop, if you were dependent on link popularity of paid links.

What most website owners do not know is whether their website is search engine optimized. Search engine optimization is key to your website finding potential customers. For that reason alone, you may also be interested to know if your competitor’s website is optimized too. But, how can you tell, if you are not conversant with SEO? Here are some of the finer points to help you understand the SEO concept and analysis.

Search Engine Index
It is important for a website seeking search engine ranking to be placed on the search engine index. When you make a search engine analysis, you should know whether your website is listed on that search engine. Let us take the example of Google search engine, since it is the most popular of all search engines. To confirm whether your site is listed, make a search of it by name in the Google search engine. If it does not show up, type the words – site:www.url.com – on the search engine. The result will show how many web pages of your site are indexed on Google. In case of no result, the site may not have been indexed, or may have been penalized.

Links
How popular your site is depends on the incoming links. Inbound links lend credence to websites, and search engines consider these as a measure of popularity of websites. In short, more the number of incoming links that a website has, higher the ranking it is provided. If you like to measure the link popularity of your site look for the PageRank. It is one measurement that cannot be relied upon, as it is not very accurate and is not updated frequently. However, type in the Yahoo search engine the words – linkdomain:www.url.com. The results give a fair view of the links.

Keywords and Key Phrases
While doing an SEO analysis, it is imperative to find out the use of keywords and key phrases in the content. There are many places on the website where you can place key phrases. Looking at the source code, you will be able to find their location. Once you open a website, click on “view” on the Internet Explorer menu, and then on “source”. Check the title, meta keywords, and meta description to find whether key phrases have been used in these areas.

Content
Content is king; and that is what the search engine considers true. Check the content for keyword and key phrase use. Each page should contain a minimum 200 to 300 words and around 1 to 2 keywords or keyword phrases. If the density of keywords is too high, the website can be penalized.

Navigation
How user-friendly is your website navigation will help determine its search engine ranking. If all web pages are easily accessible, you can expect all of them to be indexed by the search engine. If the search engine crawler has a tough time crawling through your entire website, it will drop all those pages off the index that it finds difficult to access. To avoid this situation, it is imperative to have a sitemap on the website with appropriate text links to facilitate search engines access the entire site.

Keeping the above SEO analysis in mind, you can do a good job of testing your website and determining the gray areas that need your attention. Following the above pointers, you can ensure an improved search engine ranking for your website.

Most websites are working out a formula to come on top of a search engine results page (SERP), but the algorithms that search engines follow are an enigma. Though webmasters and search engine optimization experts do have a fair bit of expertise on what to do to make your website visible on the SERPs, but, the manner in which the search engines work remains a mystery. Among the many methods to achieve high search engine rankings, you can rely on the title tags to deliver the results. You can achieve quick results by simply optimizing the title tag. As the title tag contains the words that appear on the SERP, making appropriate changes to the title tag will ensure a better click through rate.

Search engines give more importance to the title tag followed by the visible text content and inward links. To make your brand count, it will certainly help to add your company name in the title tag. If yours is a well-known company brand, searchers will immediately associate with it, and if not, then placing your company’s name in the title tag will create better brand awareness provided you are dealing in high quality products or services.

Adding a descriptive phrase to your company name in the title tag will help your cause further. People aware of your brand name will not have any difficulty searching out your website. But those searching your products or services with no idea that your business exists, will be able to find you over the search engine if the title tag bears a description of your business as well.

Make sure that the description you provide is associated with a keyword phrase. If, for example, you have a tour operating business and your company is “Bradworth and King Inc”, do mention the keyword phrase “tour operator” or “luxury tour operator” in the title tag for the simple reason that people make searches on these keyword phrases. And, if you cater to certain specific areas, mention these areas of operation as well. For example, you may use the keyword phrases: “Peru tour operator”, Costa Rica tour operator”, or “China tour operator”.

Using your title tag optimally, you can ensure a better ranking in search engines, along with your text content and inbound links, of course.

Branding as part of search engine marketing came to light in 2001. The NPD Group studied the effectiveness of the three types of ads that appeared on search engines, namely, SERP (Search Engine Results Page) listings, banner ads, and tile ads. The findings pointed to SERP listings as the most popularly clicked and read ads, Banner and tile ads were not as popular. Thus, SERP listings led to greater brand awareness in comparison to the other two.

Another study was conducted in 2004, where Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen/Net Ratings explored the branding attributes such as - unaided brand awareness, aided ad awareness, and brand image associations - based on SERP exposure and related ad placement. It was found that SERP branding was far superior to related ad branding and was more effective when the brand held the top spot in SERPs.

Branding today is the keyword that defines the customers’ relationship with a company. The experiences that the customers have and the manner in which they perceive the company is a part of the brand. If the brand stands out, customers will remain loyal and contribute to profitability. According to SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), a majority of companies aim at increased brand awareness and conduct most of their activity around this perception.

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing was thus far limited to driving traffic to websites for generating leads and online and offline conversions. It has now dawned on the SEM experts that their efforts have led to branding of websites and their products. Though the finding has been accidental, its importance can no more be ignored. Internet branding is gradually merging with corporate branding in the sense that it is helping in no small way the overall branding of the company.

The indexing process of your website includes its title, description, and content based on which a link is created in the SERP. The brief description serves as an ad to the viewer. A meaningful description works as a strong attention-grabber that makes the viewer click on the link to land on your web page. To strengthen your brand, it is imperative to provide informative content that leads to conversion. So, your branding strategy should include a strong and compelling message on the SERP, and content and information on the landing page that will lead to conversion.

Search engine marketing is the latest marketing buzz, which is seeing a phenomenal growth in the number of companies taking to search engines as a prop to power their marketing campaign. To score quick points in this area, it is imperative to have a meaningful search engine marketing strategy in place to extract positives from the new advertising standard. Before you consult a search engine marketing firm, have a look at the following few points to ensure formulating a strong strategy.

• For any search engine marketing strategy to prosper, it is important to keep a tab on the performance of advertisements. You will need to track every aspect of your ad campaign. According to a survey conducted by SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), almost 40% of the advertisers fail to calculate their return on investment (ROI) and over 30% do not keep a tab on their conversion rates. It seems most inappropriate for advertisers to keep placing ads without making any effort to know if their ads are paying for themselves. It is important to know which ads are paying and which are not.

• Do not go only for those keywords that are most sought after by customers. There is already a lot of competition for such keywords since a majority of websites will have those keywords incorporated in their web pages. A better choice to increase traffic inflow is in using keywords used by a smaller number of customers. This quickly narrows down the search to your web pages. A good mix of popular and less sought after keywords will spell success for your search engine optimizing campaign.

• Most well-launched search engine marketing strategies fall through for want of proper follow-through. It is easy to set up search engine campaigns, but sustaining them requires both time and effort. Ask any search engine marketing specialist, and they will stress on keeping a track on the performance of your ad campaign. Search engines keep introducing better features to help ad campaigns. But, onus is on the advertisers to see whether a particular feature will help their campaign.

If you are looking for a search engine marketing service, you could discuss the issue on the above lines and extract the best out of the services.

Website inspectors inspect websites for detecting flaws in them that slow down their progress in search engine rankings. The main purpose of deploying website inspectors is to apply corrective measures to help make websites more search engine friendly.

Website inspectors carry out an evaluation of websites from an SEO viewpoint, analyze HTML codes including Alt image tags and Meta tags, check the website design, analyze whether the text and content is keyword optimized, and see overall whether the website suits SEO. A detailed report is then generated with suggestions to make the desired amendments.

You may ask how different website inspectors are from other SEO companies. The roles that both play are different. SEO firms play a limited role in evaluating and reporting on website HTML code and website design, while website inspectors make detailed evaluation of HTML codes, website design, use of keywords and keyword phrases in text – all from the viewpoint of improved search engine ranking. Website inspection includes reporting on all matters that affect SEO status, and provides practical suggestions and solutions aimed at rectifying anomalies and improving search engine rankings. SEO firms do not generally do a comprehensive study. They may come up with what is wrong with a website, but may not be able to provide solutions to improve website rankings.

In general, SEO companies use software to help generate reports on shortcomings in a website, which are generic and contain irrelevant information with little to suggest how to improve search engine rankings. Where website inspectors differ is that they refrain from using software, doing a detailed analysis of the website and treating each website as a separate entity. The reports generated by them are specific, detailed, and carry suggestions and solutions that really matter in SEO operations.

These reports, containing solutions, are user-friendly and ethical. Many SEO firms have been reported to be using unethical “black hat” solutions, which may land customer websites in trouble with search engines, later. Linking to link farms is treated as an exercise in spamming, and may open a website to search engine scrutiny and action. Search engines may place offending websites in a “sandbox” or even ban them.

Website inspectors ask for access to web pages of the client and provide online solutions by rectifying website design. This feature of their services is a great help to website owners, as they receive a complete solution to their effort to improve search engine rankings.

You would certainly like to see your company website as a forerunner on the search engine result pages (SERP); and, if you have no idea how to do it, take the help of a professional search engine marketing (SEM) company. Search engine marketing is a broad term that entails pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), pay for inclusion (PFI) programs to improve search engine visibility. The main issue, however, is how to pick an SEM firm.

The success of your website’s visibility over the internet is the responsibility of the SEM firm that you may engage. It is important to have trust on that firm. For trust to be had, apart from relying on your gut feeling, seek certain answers.

• The company should answer all your queries frankly and without sounding ambiguous about anything.
• They should disclose how they intend optimizing your website.
• Confirm the professional experience they have in the business, and ask for references.
• Make sure that they do not use questionable means that could jeopardize the existence of your website on the search engine.
• Discuss the purpose of your business with the person who will deal with the actual process, and not the salesperson. Salespersons may not be able to understand your needs, interested as they would be in winning your business.
• Discuss the services you want included such as, PFI or PPC. Ask for other services that are available, and seek their recommendation whether a particular service will benefit you.
• If you opt for PPC, ask whether the SEM company will provide that service, since not all SEM firms provide such specialized service. Ask them to recommend any such company.
• Learn from the SEM company how they will ascertain the best keywords and keyword phrases for your business, products or services. Discuss in detail how these keywords will be used, since you know your business better.
• Make sure that all methods used at search engine optimizing your company are ethical. You would not like your website penalized, suspended or expelled by a search engine.
• Your website may need redesigning for search engine optimization. Discuss the matter with your expert, as you may have to re-write the content to allow for keywords and keyword phrases.
• Consult the issue with a few SEM companies comparing their services and professional fee.