Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Professional

Many businesses go through all kinds of steps before hiring a search engine optimization professional. Unfortunately, they often then sabotage that person from the outset.

Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Professional

As a person providing seo services, I can tell you there is one area that is almost always a point of conflict with clients. This area has to do with communication, particularly from the client to the person or business handling the seo campaign.

Many businesses sabotage their seo professional right from the start of the game. It all has to do with knowledge. A seo professional is very knowledgeable about the search engine ranking process. He or she can tell you oodles of information about algorithms, back links, inbound links, keyword density and other issues you probably are not particularly interested in. On the other hand, it is a mistake to assume your seo wizard is knowledgeable about your product or service area.

Any business has a secret bit of crucial knowledge locked away in the minds of a few individuals high up in the company. This knowledge is protected with great effort since it is deemed to be the key to success for the business. Although each business is different, this nugget usually has to do with why prospects purchase the product or service being offered by the business. If you do not provide this information to your seo professional, problems will arise.

Consider the following situation. A seo firm is retained by a client selling products. The seo rep asks all kinds of questions about the typical customer for the business, product lines and so on. From this, a keyword list is developed and the client is asked to review it and make any comments about any additions they can think of. The business reports no changes. A year down the line, the client has top rankings on dozens of high traffic keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN, but sales are less than expected.

At this point, there is usually a serious meeting with the players to try to figure out what is going on. During the meeting, some little tidbit is mentioned that makes the seo professional groan. The tidbit is inevitably internal business information regarding why prospects purchase from the business.

In our example above, the business sold products in the active lifestyle industry. Top rankings were obtained on all the relevant subjects. Sales were crap. During the serious, serious meeting, it was leaked that 8 out of 10 purchasers asked for the product to be gift wrapped! ARRRRRGGGG! The seo campaign was tailored to people interested in active lifestyles, not people that were looking to buy gifts for such people. Our sales were terrible because the listings were appearing in front of the wrong audience!

Yes, this really happened. Fortunately, keyword modifications were made and the site rebounded in the rankings after a few months. Whereas the site previously converted at 1 in 1,000, it now converts at 1 in 30. The next meeting was much more informal. In fact, there were plenty of beverages and I took the next day off.

If you are going to retain someone to handle your seo efforts, or any marketing for you, do not hold back information. Understanding who and why people buy is a pivotal part of developing a keyword list for a seo campaign.

How to keep robots out of your web site

THE ROBOTS.TXT FILE You know that search engines have been created to help people find information quickly on the Internet, and the search engines acquire much of their information through robots (also known as spiders or crawlers), that look for web pages for them. The spiders or crawlers robots explore the web looking for and recording all kinds of information. They usually start with URL submitted by users, or from links they find on the web sites, the sitemap files or the top level of a site. Once the robot accesses the home page then recursively accesses all pages linked from that page. But the robot can also check out all the pages that can find on a particular server. After the robot finds a web page it works indexing the title, the keywords, the text, etc. But sometimes you might want to prevent search engines from indexing some of your web pages like news postings, and specially marked web pages (in example: affiliate´s pages), but whether individual robots comply to these conventions is pure voluntary. ROBOTS EXCLUSION PROTOCOL So if you want robots to keep out from some of your web pages, you can ask robots to ignore the web pages that you don´t want indexed, and to do that you can place a robots.txt file on the local root server of your web site. In example if you have a directory called e-books and you want to ask robots to keep out of it, your robots.txt file should read: User-agent: * Disallow: e-books/ When you don´t have enough control over your server to set up a robots.txt file, you can try adding a META tag to the head section of any HTML document. In example, a tag like the following tells robots not to index and not to follow links on a particular page: meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" Support for the META tag among robots is not so frequent as the Robots Exclusion Protocol, but most of major web indexes currently support it. NEWS POSTINGS If you want to keep the search engines out of your news postings, you can create an an "X-no-archive" line in of your postings' headers: X-no-archive: yes But although common news clients, allow you to add an X-no-archive line to the headers of your news postings, some of them don´t permit you to do so. The problem is that most search engines assume that all information they find is public unless marked otherwise. So be careful because though the robot and archive exclusion standards may help keep your material out of major search engines there are some others that respect no such rules. If you're highly concerned about the privacy of your e-mail and Usenet postings, you must use some anonymous remailers and PGP. You can read about it here: http://www.well.com/user/abacard/remail.html http://www.io.com/~combs/htmls/crypto.html http://world.std.com/~franl/pgp/ Even if you are not particularly concerned about privacy, remember that anything you write will be indexed and archived somewhere for eternity, so use the robots.txt file as much as you need it. Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi

Important things you need to know about internet marketing

When it comes to setting your website apart amongst the competition, you need to know a few things. You can’t just expect to slap a website up on the net and have traffic run to you. If you really want the traffic, you will have to learn search engine optimization tactics to go along with your basic internet marketing knowledge. In today’s game, it’s not enough just to hope that traffic will turn up. The best websites are the ones who are going out and bringing in their own traffic. What is search engine optimization, or SEO as it’s called for short? It’s the process by which websites make their content more efficient. Search engines pick up on certain things, and if you are able to turn your website into a place full of those items, you will be on top of the search engine lists. For example, when someone types in a search phrase into Google or one of the other popular search engines, the results will come out as their rankings would suggest. Google ranks these pages based upon their relevance, popularity, and a host of other factors. SEO tactics can help you climb to the top of those rankings lists, so when people enter a search into the search engine, your site will come up on top. If you are a website owner and you don’t really know what you’re doing, then take heart. There are many companies out there who are willing to help you. They will take a look at your website and tell you with a great deal of accuracy what it would take in order to make your site more efficient. Maybe your content does not have as many keywords as it should? Maybe you are using duplicate content that is pushing you down in the ratings? Whatever the case, the internet marketing professionals can help you in this regard. The important thing to remember about search engine optimization is that the tactics are always changing. The search engines update their ranking systems all the time, so you need to be aware of the changes. You have to be adaptable and know exactly how to keep your site on top of the game if you want to have any hope of being successful. A good start to improving your website’s SEO efficiency is to have content that is filled with juicy keywords. This is something you can probably do on your own without too much trouble. That isn’t the only aspect of SEO that you have to keep in mind, though. By knowing all of the popular and useful search engine optimization techniques, you are giving your website a fighting chance. Otherwise, your website will have absolutely no chance. All of your competitors are out there making sure that they are getting as much traffic as they can pull in. If you don’t do this, then you are short changing the potential of your website.

ALL ABOUT LINKS FOR SEO

The natural one-way links. This one is solely based in good content and resources. This is the safest method of link building available as far as search engines, which look at the “intent” of links. But it is also the slowest. If your site is new, then as part of its launch, submit it to niche web directories. Start with a few highly trusted directories, but do not have more than 10-15% of your overall links coming from them. Don't overlook industry-specific directories that may be paid or unpaid. These usually send highly qualified traffic and can be a real bargain. Directories will get you site many natural one-way links, at a natural speed of growth. This combination of type and speed is very beneficial. Look for sites that would benefit from offering users your content. Linkbaiting, or link bait. This one is not easy, and involves creativity. But it is worth every effort. Linkbaiting refers to content, videos, images or anything on your site that is created with the intention of increasing links to it. It is highly effective in getting links, probably the cheapest too, based on the cost of the “bait” you use, has no negative effects from the search engines, at least not for the moment, since all links generated look natural. When complemented by social bookmarking, the networks associated with these links will add even more value to them. Paying for links, or paid links. These links can have great short-term search benefits. These are good mainly for sites that have tons of pages with content, and have been well established online for years. In addition, these sites also have tons of natural links to them, again because they had been well established online for years. These are not recommended for new sites. Look for sites that are highly on topic with yours, and in complementary niches. A very important factor in the evaluation of these links, like any other, is age. And the latest “Google Slap” effect were sites fall pass the top 30 in the listings, is affecting primarily those which do heavy link buying. Bad links and their effects. Outbound links play a big role in the way search engines determine who your “neighborhood” is. Bad neighborhoods will affect your search engine rankings. Things like FFA (Free For All) link pages, links farms, etc, fall in this category. Note that this has nothing to do with your pages going into the supplemental index. That is not the kind of penalty these links cause for your site. And the amount of bad links considered is a big one. A small amount of them would not trigger a penalty, but make sure that your site is not related in any way to those link patterns.

Search Engine Placement: An Essential Internet Marketing Technique

Research reveals that about 80% of people looking for goods or services on the Internet start by using one of the major search engines There are currently millions of internet users within the U.S. alone and over one billion internet users worldwide. If your web site doesn't have a high search engine placement, those seeking to buy your products won't find them and will turn to your competitors. Your potential customers are searching for your products and services every day. Is your website appearing at the top of major search engines for your specific key words? Knowing how your customers are searching for your products and services, and being found at the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN for those exact search terms are crucial. Search engine placement is a science of fine-tuning a website using both on-page search engine optimization methods, as well as off-page search engine optimization methods so that a site has higher search engine placement. The Search engine placement techniques are composed of the following: • Analysis of your existing Web pages. • Analysis of keywords compared to various search engine databases. • Optimization or creation of new pages that includes content related to your key phrases. • Submission of your pages to the major search engines. • Monitoring and reporting on your position on each search engine. Every day, web surfers engage in a hunt for information on products and services. Throughout the day, these consumers enter millions queries at major search engines. Web sites that are not optimized tend to get buried in search engine result pages where consumers rarely look. Even if you have a great web site, without a high search engine ranking, few people will ever find it. Optimizing a web site for top search engine ranking increases its chances of appearing at the top of the search engine listings when a user makes a query. Search engine placement can be a very arduous task. It involves long hours of optimizing content, submitting web sites and analyzing search engine rankings. If things go right, your web site may just capture a top spot in the rankings, if things go wrong however, it may drown in a sea full of millions of other web sites. Engaging the services of a reliable optimization company will save you from the above anxiety. If you own an online business and you notice that you are not getting any sales then it might be because your website does not have the right search engine placement. If you are planning on making some extra cash make sure that your website is fully optimized so that people can find you on search engines. You will be pleased for having worked on this one!

High Paying Lateral Keywords

If you run AdSense on your site you know that some words pay more than others, much more in fact. More than likely you have also learned that terms like "structured settlements" and "mesothelioma" can produce incredibly high PPC revenue, if they show up on your site at all. Unfortunately hundreds of thousands of other webmasters are "on" to this practice judging by the number of sites created regularly to capitalize on the phenomenom. So, where does this leave you? Out in the cold? No, by going after "lateral" keywords and terms you can produce a site that is even more profitable than these other sites. I will show you how you can do just that. What do I mean by "high paying lateral keywords?" Essentially, these are words, or terms, that webmasters dismiss as not being relevant or are unrelated to certain high paying keywords. For instance, you know that the term "free adware" has a nice payout. You gear your article or page accordingly to have AdSense produce the lucrative ads and, instead, you come up with ads that are relevant but not big payers. Should you give up? No, of course not. Instead, research similar terms that can also serve up high paying ads and go with them. In this case the following could be considered: adware blocker adware removal lavasoft adware free adware removal adware spy removal tool remove adware get adware adware search and destroy As you can see, each term contains the keyword "adware" but other words are added. In a recent survey that I conducted some of these "lateral" keywords/terms paid even more than the "free adware" terms. In addition, some nice ads were served up too. What about mesothelioma? Isn't that a hot keyword? Yes, and an overworked one. Lateral keywords for your consideration here can include: lawyers attorneys asbestos cancer lung cancer personal injury lawyer personal injury attorney The common thread with these keywords? Mesothelioma wasn't even mentioned. Sure, when you think "attorney" or "lawyer" you think of ambulance chasing terms like: bextra, malpractice, and physician neglect. Heck, if other ads are served up instead of mesothelioma ads, do not despair. Chances are that the deep pocket lawyers give a nice payout per click for these keywords too! Alright, one final example before I turn you loose to do your own research. The keywords: credit cards. student credit card airline credit card business credit card Visa credit cards credit card consolidation rewards credit cards online credit cards 0% interest credit cards cash back credit cards credit card counseling The options for some keywords are obviously greater than others. If you write your own articles and/or web content you may need to experiment in order to produce the highest paying keywords. Still, these "lateral" keywords will push up your profits almost as much as standard keywords. Now, go and do your own research!

Striking out on your own: Do you really need a sitemap generator?

There are so many responsibilities that are associated with starting a website. Each step towards the realization of a website requires a lot of hard work and utmost dedication to achieve results and to pay attention to detail. Only by doing this can one ensure that a website is set up successfully and able to meet the goals set for its creation. Aside from the mental mind frame that a website creator or business owner must possess in order to make an effective website there are also certain tools that are a requirement to ensure the success of a website. One of these important tools is a sitemap. A sitemap is an instrument that is used in order to make the navigation on a website so much easier. The word “map” truly describes what it does as it serves the same purpose in a website. A sitemap contains the website’s structure, indicating the pages and how each one is interlinked to one another. This is indicated through the form of the various links that point to the major sections as well as subsections of the whole website. The sitemap that a website uses is not just made for cosmetic purposes. It has a real useful and very essential role to play in making a website more effective. Its most important use is to make it so much easier for visitors to the website to navigate through all of the pages inside it. In effect, a sitemap prevents a visitor from getting lost inside a website – a very frustrating and irritating experience that turns off visitors and effectively makes them refuse to go back to the website again. The sitemap also ensures that they find the information that they are looking for immediately and without too much effort. A visitor who is able to find the information that he is looking for quickly (and painlessly) will be enticed to visit the website again. This return business is ultimately the foundation of a website’s success. As a way of helping web designers and business owners who have websites make effective sitemaps, sitemap generators have been introduced to make the task easier. With a sitemap generator, making sitemap becomes fool proof and easy. Is it possible to make a sitemap on your own without the aid of a sitemap generator. Of course, it is possible. Before the creation of the various sitemap generators, web designers make sitemaps on their own. But this process is quite long and tedious, not to mention fraught with errors. Even though it would ultimately be the choice of the website owner, web designer or business owner if they will use a sitemap generator or not, there really is no compelling reason not to use one. With a sitemap generator, making sitemaps are made so much easier and error free. What’s more, with a sitemap generator, every single change in the page line-up or content change is abruptly reflected, something that needs to be done manually every time if one will not use a sitemap generator.