Online Marketing 101 – Start with SEO

Historically, SEO has meant aiming for no1, or top 10 positions in Google but Search Engine Optimization is evolving and currently a SEO wants to be more of a marketer than simply a tech geek.

Search engine optimisation is several things, it’s an art and it’s a science. S.E.O. is creative and it’s technical. It’s logical, parasitic and opportunistic.

The aim of Search Engine Optimization is to maximise targeted types of valuable traffic to a web site from search engines by improving the visibility of said website in Google organic or unpaid SERPS.

1. Always Contemplate Google’s Guidelines before you start any kind of seo

2. Google Rule change now and again – keep up to date with them!

3. Onsite, be squeaky clean with SEO! There are many seo techniques to avoid!

4. Don’t hide text or links, don’t keyword stuff

5. Do not look to ‘fool’ Google – why not give Google what it desires?

6. You are not good enough to Game Google.

7. Keep in mind every algorithm was an idea initial

8. Why not attempt and assume sort of a Google engineer when you’re creating your web site?

9. Google Webmaster Guidelines will be interpreted differently however ignore search engine SEO guidelines at your own peril

10. You don’t pay something to get into Google – it’s FREE

11. To get into free Google listings, all you need could be a link from one different site (that is itself in Google) to yours

12. Google desires to perceive it’s a full link to include you in it’s database (index) of internet sites

13. You’ll be able to submit your web site to Google, however I think it’s pointless – I’ve got never used this methodology

14. Some seo companies charge for ’submission’ to Google and different search engines – I would not trouble

15. Be cautious – SEO will be a mysterious business – guarantee you are doing not get scammed by unethical seo corporations

16. Domain authority is among the foremost important ranking factors in SEO

17. To rank in Google for a keyword your web site desires to own on-line business or domain authority.

Hobo is a Scottish SEO expert. A builder of Joomla and Wordpress content websites and with a specialist team focused on Google search engine optimisation, Hobo additionally has one in all the most well-liked SEO advice blogs in the UK, with over fifty thousand guests a month and over 71/2 thousand regular subscribers reading the close to daily recommendation on how to push your website online. Visitors who subscribe to the Hobo blog also get a bonus – a pair of free ebooks – Google Search Engine Optimisation for beginners and a Linkbuilding guide for beginners. This was a quick induction to Google SEO by Hobo seo scotland…..

January 25th, 2010

The Biggest SEO Scam of All

While there are many ethical SEO firms serving Internet users today, a few notorious practitioners also exist. One of them called me just the other day.

“We can get your site to be number one in the search engines for the top 20 search terms you choose,” promised the telemarketer. I don’t usually give telemarketers the time of day, but somehow found this fellow to be intriguing. It was a cold and snowy day in Michigan right at the moment, and somehow I felt warmer just hearing him glow about the sunshine beaming through his own office windows.

“Show me results,” I requested. So we cruised the web together, and he showed me some client sites that really did have top rankings. At first glance the sales spiel sounded rather inviting, but after taking some time to consider and evaluate his company, I determined that what this friendly young salesman offered was nothing more than a scam.

As I did my homework, several red flags jumped out at me. By researching his company on the Internet, I learned that they employed no less than 250 telemarketers soliciting SEO clients on a continual basis. With all due respect to the size of this company, I found it hard to believe that they could service the numerous SEO clients they were recruiting in a very meaningful way.

I asked the salesman about this the next time he called. He informed me that their SEO service was highly automated, built on proprietary technology that was so ahead of its time that no other firm could compete. In case you didn’t catch it, the previous sentence contained red flag #2. In the words of the old adage, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably it.”

The above was only the tip of the iceberg, however. Upon further questioning of my enthusiastic sales contact, I learned that it wasn’t really my url that they wanted to promote. Their plan was much more beneficial–for themselves, that is. They would set-up urls to be doorway pages to my website. Their urls, not mine, would be optimized to get high in the search engines. They would maintain control of and ownership of the urls, so if I ever went out of business, they could sell all that trafficand value I had paid so dearly forto one of my competitors. Pretty nice deal for them. I pay them big bucks on an annual basis to drive traffic to a url which theynot me–own. Of course, I would benefit from whatever sales came through their url as long as I continued to ante up cash.

I had a good friend who fell prey to this scheme a few years back. An unscrupulous SEO “specialist” talked her into paying big bucks for a website with a url which the SEO firm owned and controlled. The SEO firm then billed my friend much more than they had originally contracted for. When she balked at the bill, they threatened to shut down traffic to the site.

While this firm also promised hordes of traffic and top search engine listings, the only significant traffic my friend ever got was garnered through pay-per-click. To make matters worse, the SEO firm hid links to their sites throughout the html of her website.

Another fault I found with the SEO firm mentioned first in this article was the search terms they crowed about taking first place for. To say the least, they were rather obscure. It’s a pretty impressive accomplishment to come up first on the web for the search term “furniture” or even “log furniture”. But if you design a page that brings up your company first on Google for a search of “Birmingham Tuscaloosa Avenue Dry Cleaners”, big deal. And that’s what this SEO firm was doing.

Although I never seriously considered dropping $3000 or whatever it was for their services, the final clincher came when I asked what type of traffic I could expect for digging into my pockets.

“I can get you an average of 100 hits per day,” he told me. Then he showed me stats on some of their clients sites that had, over the course of a year, built up to 100 hits per day. I don’t know about you, but I want a lot more than 100 unique hits per day on my website. I’ve achieved those kinds of numbersand betterby myself. Why should I pay them for what I consider to be mediocre results?

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in SEO firms, and because of the success I’ve been having on some of my top search terms, may engage in that business myself someday. But after researching the issues carefully, I would warn fellow webmasters to beware of any SEO firm that:

• employs a boiler room full of telemarketers

• automates most or all of their services

• insists on gaining and retaining control of the url to be promoted

• focuses on lengthy and obscure search strings

• touts sites that are garnering a mere 100 hits per day as examples of their success.

Of all the bad practices mentioned above, the one I found most offensive was the idea that the SEO firm should own or control my url. While owning the url would seem like a good idea for the SEO firm (they could always collect their fees by threatening to shut down the site), it isn’t so nifty for the client. If I pay a firm to build my business, I want them to do just thatbuild my business. To pay a firm to build traffic to a url they own is really like paying them to build their businessand that, in my opinion, is the biggest SEO scam of all.

Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics

Cari Haus has been successfully selling rustic log furniture and beds on the Internet since 1997. Copyright 2005 by Cari Haus, website http://www.logcabinrustics.com/. Permission is granted to reprint this article, either online or in written publications, as long as the copyright information, this paragraph, and a link address or a link to the Log Cabin Rustics website is attached at the end of the article.

January 11th, 2010

Laws of Similarity between Real and Virtual Amusement

How to drive traffic to your amusement park

Continue Reading December 18th, 2009

What Is the True Art of SEO?

Too many people talk about search engine optimization without explaining whether they think it is an art or a science. To most of those people search engine optimization is a skill or a business or a profession. But the truth of the matter is that there is both art and science in SEO. The art of SEO is the ability to look at search results and determine what should be done. The science of SEO is the knowledge it takes to become a powerful user of the art.

Some people say that the art of SEO is building a frame that makes the picture look better. It’s not just about making a better picture but also about making a better frame. You have to be careful not to confuse this philosophy with sham tactics. The idea is not to always put a bad picture in a great frame. You want to put a great frame around a great picture.

But it could also be said that the art of SEO is the practice or application of the science behind search engine optimization. So in order to be a great SEO artist you have to know at least some of the SEO science. The fundamental principles of SEO are easy to enumerate, too. You have to do keyword research, build optimized documents, create good Web site structure, build some links to your site, and monitor your results so you can make adjustments when necessary.

This is pretty serious business. Several people have written very thorough articles that attempt to deconstruct both the science and the art of SEO for their readers. They take an in-depth look at what is written on the Web and try to extract the best value possible.

October 25th, 2009

Australian Article Directory

One of the most significant aspects of any online strategy is how do I succeed in the serps. How do I make my site to rank substantially in Google, Microsoft’s Live or Yahoo?

One of the most essential aspects of doing winning in the search engines (assuming the fundamental principle like outstanding content are in place) is receiving links to your site. You can obtain this a lots of ways, some taken positively by the serps and some not so positively.

One of the trusty methods, that the search engine engineers think is O.K. is link building with articles.

Basically this calls for composing a solid article, rather about something from your area of expertise, and then publishing it to a free article directory.

You really should not lowball the importance of link building. If there is one signal that takes precedence to the search engines, by and large, it is links. Sure, there are stacks of other signals, like the domain name, but you are deluding yourself if you conceive you are going to be listed well, and easily found, if you do not deliver any links.

Building links with articles is easy. It is something the search engines say is okay. And, it adds value to the web, by providing valuable content that might be interesting or useful to users. The real question is what are you waiting for?

June 9th, 2009

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability

A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don’t realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors.

Ultimately this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimisation and usability compatible? Aren’t there trade-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want? Read on and find out (although I’m sure you can guess the answer!)…

1. Keyword research carried out

Before you even begin building your website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Using publicly available tools such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com), you can discover which keywords are searched for the most frequently and then specifically target those phrases.

Doing keyword research is also crucial for your site’s usability. By using the same keywords in your website that web users are searching for in search engines, you’ll literally be speaking the same language as your site visitors.

For example, you might decide to target the phrase, “sell toys”, as your website does in fact sell toys. Keyword research would undoubtedly show you that web users are actually searching for, “buy toys” (think about it – have you ever searched using the word, “sell”, when you want to buy something?). By placing the phrase, “buy toys” on to the pages on your website, you’ll be using the same words as your site visitors and they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for more easily.

2. 200 word minimum per page

Quite simply, search engines love content – the more content there is on a page the easier it is for search engines to work out what the page is actually about. Search engines may struggle to work out the point of a web page with less than 200 words, ultimately penalising that page in the search rankings.

In terms of usability, it’s also good to avoid pages with very little content. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed information. Don’t be afraid to put a reasonably large amount of information on to a page. Web users generally don’t mind scrolling down anymore, and provided the page provides mechanisms to aid scanning (such as employing sub-headings – see point 6 below) it shouldn’t be too difficult for site visitors to locate the information that they’re after.

3. 100kb maximum HMTL size

If 200 words is the minimum page content size, then 100kb is the maximum, at least in terms of HMTL file size. Anything more than this and search engines may give up on the page as it’s simply too big for them.

A 100kb HMTL file will take 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem, used by three in four UK web users as of March 2004 (source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/intc0504.pdf). Add on the time it takes for all the other parts of the page to download, such as images and JavaScript files, and you’re looking at a highly un-user-friendly download time!

4. CSS used for layout

The website of Juicy Studios (http://www.juicystudio.com) saw a six-fold increase in site visitors after switching from a table-based layout to a CSS layout. Search prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:

- The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines

- Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document

- There is a greater density of content compared to coding

Using CSS for layout is also highly advantageous for usability, as it leads to significantly faster download times.

5. Meaningful page title

If you know anything about search engine optimisation you’ll know that search engines place more importance on the page title than any other attribute on the page. If the title adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.

A meaningful page title also helps site visitors work out where they are, both within the site and the web as a whole. The page title is the first thing that loads up, often quite a few seconds before the content, so a descriptive, keyword-rich page title can be a real aid to help users orientate themselves.

6. Headings and sub-headings used

Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings (in theory at least) summarise the content immediately below them.

Headings are also incredibly useful for your human site visitors, as they greatly aid scanning. Generally speaking, we don’t read on the web, we scan, looking for the information that we’re after. By breaking up page sections with sub-headings that effectively describe the content beneath them, scanning becomes significantly easier.

Do be sure not to abuse heading tags though. The more text you have contained in heading tags within the page, the less importance search engines assign to them.

7. Opening paragraph describes page content

We’ve already established that search engines love content, but they especially love the first 25 words or so on each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page (or the site if it’s the homepage), you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area.

As web users, whenever we arrive at a web page the first thing we need to know is whether this page has the information that we’re after. A great way to find this out is to scan through the first paragraph, which, if it sufficiently describes the page content, should help us out.

8. Descriptive link text

Search engines place a lot of importance on link text. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say ‘click here’, search engines can’t gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, ‘widgets’ then search engines can easily guess what that page is about.

One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, ‘miserable failure’. So many people have linked to George Bush’s bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush’s bio appears top of the search rankings!

As web users, we don’t generally read web pages word-for-word – we scan them looking for the information that we’re after. When you scan through text you can’t take any meaning from the word ‘click here’. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.

9. Frames avoided

Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren’t as commonplace as they once were, do still rear up their ugly head from time to time. Using frames is one of the worst possible things you could do for your search engine ranking, as most search engines can’t follow links between frames.

Even if a search engine does index your pages and web users find you through a search engine, they’ll be taken to one of the pages within the frame. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation (navigation is normally contained in a separate frame) and therefore no way to navigate to any other page on the site!

Frames are also disadvantageous for usability as they can cause problems with the back button, printing, history and bookmarking. Put simply, say no to frames!

10. Quality content provided

This may seem like a strange characteristic of a search engine optimised website, but it’s actually crucial. Search engines, in addition to looking at page content, look at the number of links pointing in to web pages. The more inbound links a website has, all other things being equal, the higher in the search rankings it will appear.

By providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website, webmasters will want to link to you as doing so will add value to their site visitors. You will also be adding value to your site visitors.

Conclusion

Optimising your website for both search engines and people needn’t be a trade-off. With this much overlap between the two areas, you should easily be able to have a website that web users can find in the search engines, and when they do find it, they can find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible – http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

January 3rd, 2009