Google cares more about their users rather than those people spending huge amount of money to advertise their site. Regardless whether you give Google $10k a month for your PPC campaign, they can actually slap you anytime, “Google slap” as they call it. Another thing I learn, I’m not an expert on PPC (Pay per Click) yet, I only use it on my own personal site and I learn that you cannot just pause and play campaigns, just to test, there are other way of doing it. Why, your historical CRT (Click Through Rate) matters a lot. The acceptable CTR at least is 2%; Google actually monitors your activity and inactivity the first day you run a campaign. How do you measure CTR? It’s Click/Impression = CTR. And if you want to know your Ad Rank its CPC (Cost per Click x Quality Score). The CPC is the amount you’re willing to pay and Quality score covers your landing page, relevance of ad test, historical CTR, account performance and other relevant factors. In short, Quality Score encompass both your account performance as a whole and the quality of your website, which is quite a lot to discuss. Well, I can’t discuss it yet, I still have to attend another seminar this June on PPC, a hands-on coaching (I’m really excited on this one).
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Design Development SEO Blog
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2nd Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website
Posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010Posted by Teena at 7:10 AM
Categories: SEO, Web design, Web development
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1st Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website
Posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010Posted by Teena at 11:46 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO, Web design, Web development
5 Comments »
Just this morning I attended the 1st day of Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website. The speaker was a Simon Leung, a retired most senior Google optimization specialist with guest speaker Fabian Lim who is currently the CEO of Internet Academy Pte Ltd. The event was sponsored by Powermax Consulting Group Inc. The topics covered were…well, of course we haven’t discussed some of the topic outlined below, I still have to attend to tomorrow though, but here it is:
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Google PageRank Update for 2010
Posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010Posted by Teena at 3:24 PM
Categories: Google, SEO
1 Comment »
I thought for a while PageRank was no longer one of the factors Google used to rank your site and now almost everybody seems to talk about it. For those who do not know, PageRank as described by Google:
“ relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.”
To simplify, it’s one of the factor used to measure a sites’ importance through the quality of links in terms of relevancy linking back to it. It is considered to be one of the most important factors to determine its Google Ranking on Search Engine Result Page (SeRP). The higher the PageRank the higher, the chance on appearing on SeRP.
Almost everybody was happy when Google rolled out PageRank for everybody. Well I guess guys we better continue our efforts to build links. We can never tell when Google is rolling out another PageRank for everyone.
What you need to know before Handling your own SEO Campaign
Posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010Posted by Teena at 3:09 PM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
17 Comments »
SEO to others may just be a link building effort alone but looking at the picture, you do not only build links for the sake of link popularity but you do it following a certain guidelines. In this case, not everybody is aware of what white and black hats are all about, or the penalty of not following the set standards of ethical link building.
Before you handle your own SEO campaign particularly for small business owners and individual who has their own web page, research is always the key. Yes, we want to cut down cost of marketing for your business but let’s not try to oversimplify SEO and look at the pros and cons of handling your own campaign.
The most common advantage of managing your own SEO is that, there is no additional overhead expense. Typically you just assigned it to someone as additional workload or you do it yourself if you’re just an individual trying to promote your profession. If you have a budget for it, you hire an additional person, which is cost-effective depending on the skills of your SEO campaign manager but can also be more expensive, again this will depend on the skill level. For those who only have at least 2 years experience, starting salary would be around $40,000 – $50,000 annually, which could go as high as $100,000.
Now for the cons, though money-wise, in-house SEO is a good move, but again, there are underlying factors that makes it a good investment. Not all in-house SEO campaign succeeds. Productivity-wise, in my opinion, it’s best to concentrate on your core competency. Setting and aligning goals could still be done even if you outsource your SEO, allowing you to focus on improving the products and service you provide. Another point, you do not have to worry about following SEO guidelines, appearing SeRP (Search Engine Result Page), link popularity, your SEO agency can handle those.
So before you decide if you will manage your own SEO campaign, weigh the pros and cons, you have to consider your resources. You will have to invest on both anyway so invest wisely.
Why you need more than just a Website
Posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010Posted by Teena at 11:30 AM
Categories: SEO, Web design
4 Comments »
Although a website is the first step to succeed online, succeeding online don’t only rely on having a good site. It’s simply the first plan of action you need to implement before launching your site in the World Wide Web. Needless to say, it will be your store front to establish your online presence.
Before you start with the design, consider the fact that you need your site to work for Search Engines and end-users. You have to balance between the two, both are equally important for a website. You need more than just a website to launch an effective online campaign. Consider researching for keywords to use as your meta-tags, titles, description etc., learn the art of creating a navigation system that both users and spiders understand, create an XML site map etc. Visit this page on how to create an SEO Website Design Friendly.
Another thing, when I say more than just a website, it means worthy to be bookmarked as reference. Other site owners create a blog to share relevant information about the products and services they offer, while others provide a section for resources. You really don’t have to create a blog just to say you have one. You need to ask yourself this:
• Do I have passion for writing?
• Can I really maintain it?
These are just two of the questions you have to think over before launching your own blog (this will be discussed further on my next blog).
If what you have is more than just a website, then you don’t have to worry about on-site optimization. The next action you need to do is market your website doing off-site optimization. If you worked from the ground up, optimizing your site for Search Engine will not be as hard as it seems – less effort, more savings. Work from the ground up, learn the basics and avoid unnecessary processes to optimize a site. When the site is ready, you only need a good plan for your link building activities.
Scamming SEO Companies
Posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010Posted by Teena at 1:48 AM
Categories: SEO
8 Comments »
There are scammers everywhere when it comes to the field of business and scammers won’t let the SEO services get away. Yes, there are also SEO companies who are nothing but scammers. Unfortunately, they still get to be successful in luring innocent people into their bait. Here are a few tips that you should know to avoid being one of the victims of SEO scammers.
Impossible Promises
Come on, we should get real here. There’s no way that a certain SEO company could give you a number one rank on Google in a matter of days. SEO is a continuous step-by-step process which helps your site to get up higher one at a time. Don’t fall for promises saying that they could get your site to page one of a search engine even if you’re beyond page ten. Keep in mind that SEO is not something that could be rushed. To be successful, patience is needed. It’s better to pay for a service that requires you to wait for a while but is sure to give you results than to pay for a service that promises fast results then leaving you with nothing.
Using Email for Marketing
If it’s a reliable SEO company that you want, you won’t find them in your e-mail’s Inbox or Spam folder. The best thing that you could do is to search for them in search engines. Companies with high page ranks are most probably trustworthy companies. Because if they offer SEO services then they should also be able to get their own sites have a higher page rank. Never fall for those who would email you saying “Your site is not listed in search engines” then would start offering services to get your site listed and even give you a high page rank.
Get Famous in Thousands of Search Engines
Sure this will really be pleasing to the ears of someone who wants their site to be as popular as they want. But thousands of search engines are just useless if you would think of it. The ones you should be concerned of are the big players such as Yahoo, Google, Bing, etc. Fraud SEO companies will just spread your site everywhere and that would do no good to you. It will just send minimal or worse, no traffic at all to your site and worse than that, your site could get penalized for spamming the web.
Research
Always look at the company’s background. Search for satisfied clients. Review their history and note any suspicious acts and information. Be vigilant. It’s better to be extra careful than be a victim of scammers. You will surely lose money if you rush into things without doing your research.
Being a victim of a scammer can always be avoided. Make sure you take all of these things into consideration when choosing the company for SEO services. Because when it’s too late, it’s impossible to get your money back and your site will be left to rot. These scammers are fast and smart. The key is to outsmart them by being careful.
How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly
Posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009Posted by SEO Expert at 12:10 AM
Categories: SEO, Web design, Web development
32 Comments »
A website should be eye catching to attract visitors. It should also be very search engine friendly. What matters aside from being user friendly is that it’s searchable on the web, otherwise, your website is useless.
How do we create an SEO friendly web design?
If you use flash on the entire website, you will have to put double the work to make it search engine firendly. Search Engine (SE’s) ignores Flash, therefore, you will also need a non-flash version of your website. If you really need to use flash, make sure that you have an alternative textual description that can be understood by SE spiders. Otherwise, you can also use web 2.0 technology to put your content first before your flash designs.
When using images, be sure to fill-in “name” and “alt” tags. The graphical image itself cannot be seen by SE spider, it is through this tags that SE spider interpret your website. Use relevant description only and do not try to deceive SE spider.
Avoid using frames, SE spiders have no way to interpret content on a frame.
Use CSS navigation and style sheets, doing so makes your navigational menu crawl-able and indexable by SE spider. Using Javascript and Flash do not have the same result – it is unseen by SE spiders. So if you have javascript or flash on your site, you also need to have simple texts of the same message you put in Javascript or flash.
Though it’s not a requirement to use CSS stylesheets, it will help your site to load faster.
Conduct a Keyword Research to use on your meta tags and contents but also avoid keyword stuffing, suggested keyword density is 3-5%. For the title tag, characters should be at lest 70 and 150 for the description. Have at least 5-8 important keywords listed in your keyword tag.
Also, use keyword researched on your anchor text, H1, H2 and H3 as much as possible. This will help you rank in Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).
Create SEO friendly URL, incorporate your keyword related to your web page. Use dashes to separate words.
Structure your site up to 3 levels deep; Google only sees three-levels deep.
Provide useful content and make sure to have at least 250 words each web page since some SE spiders requires at least 250 to analyze your site. Make it a point as well that content on your site coincide with keywords used, else, SE spider will find it of little value.
Lastly, provide a site map.
Having an optimized site works well with your SEO campaign, the second step now depends on you.
If you like this article you may want to read 10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
10 Link Building Strategies
Posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Posted by SEO Expert at 9:37 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
9 Comments »
Various link building strategies can be implemented. To name a few, I listed down 10 common strategies that are use by most SEO experts. And before implementing your link building strategy make sure to analyze your competition. This could help you decide how to go about it.
1. Directory submission – make sure to submit your website to various website directory. Include paid listing such as Yahoo Directory, Yellowpages and Best of the Web, it would cost a bit but it pays to be more credible on the web.
2. You probably have an idea where your competitors are linking if you’ve analyzed your competition, from here try to get hold of any links linking back to your competitor site. You can send in a letter of intent to have your link included on their page, perhaps through link exchange or paid inclusion.
To make your job easier, Firefox offers various plug-ins like Foxy SEO tool to easily identify your competitor’s backlinks.
3. Write a Press Release. A well written Press Release could dramatically increase your sales and expose your company to the public.
4. Create a blog and actively read and write comments on other blogs.
5. Join online communities and actively participate in Forums.
6. Article Submission – this is a good and proven method that will ensure that your links will last for years. Listed down are some of the few article directories available on the web:
- Ezine Articles – Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure.
- Go Articles.com – Free content search engine and article directory.
- ArticlesBase.com – Submit articles for distribution, publication and promotion.
- Artcle Dashboard – Submit articles to the Article Dashboard directory, search and find free website and ezine content, and open an author submission management account.
- Article Alley - Submit articles to Article Alley for free syndication
7. Write a product or service review.
8. Link Baiting – natural method of link building. The key here is writing a buzz worthy content or providing free online tools. Read more information on Link Baiting
9. Resort to Pay Per Click (PPC)
10. Buy ads space.
In link building a combination of method is used to improve Search Engine position. This should be done regularly. There’s no sure way or a guaranteed combination of method and span of time to get your website ranked in Search Engines, it’s how you implement your strategies that will spell out your success.
10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
Posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Posted by SEO Expert at 9:25 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
5 Comments »
There are so many ways to optimize a site but the key is to plan ahead and know exactly where to start before pushing through with your campaign. Below are some tips to help you optimize your website.
1. Choose the right keyword, you must first decide on what keyword you want to get higher ranking. Website owners would typically bid for a keyword to get higher ranking, you should optimize your site the best way you could to beat the competition. How? Analyze your competitors’ website, keywords they use, incoming links etc, in summary analysis of how they made it to no. 1 of Google or other Major Search Engines (SE’s). It will be your benchmark regardless of how old the site is.
2. Optimize your meta-tags using keywords
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title that you would like to appear on SeRP</TITLE>
<META CONTENT=”description of the content”>
<META CONTENT=”keywords separated by comma”>
</HEAD>
Do not repeat your keywords on each tag and do not resort to unethical practices such as keyword stuffing. Suggested keyword density is 3-5 it’s the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page, according to Wikipedia.
Develop content that is unique, again, this should include your keywords with suggested keyword density.
3. Build SEO friendly URLs
4. Create Sitemap
5. Establish your site by submitting to trusted directories like Open Directory Project, Yahoo Directory and Yellowpages.
6. Submit to Web Directories and Search Engines
7. Build Links
8. Know when and how to use Social Media
9. Use Analytics to monitor progress and know which works best
To add to the list, don’t be afraid to experiment and be patient. SEO is a continuous process what works today may not work tomorrow.
How to Promote your Blog?
Posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009Posted by SEO Expert at 10:13 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
1 Comment »
I’ve read a lot of blogs lately and analyzed how this blogs really caught my attention. First things first, before you promote your blog, make sure you know your target audience is and create blogs relevant to your niche market. And second, before you go out promoting your blog, which everybody would want to do, try asking yourself if your content is worth reading. Are you really giving out something that your readers expect from you, not that you have to stick on a certain topic – just stick on the relevant ones. Create a brand for your blog and deliver that message. This is really helpful if you are just starting-up –attract visitors in your niche first before diving for the big fish. Your content is why you develop huge list of followers and try to give what they expect from you, and be consistent.
So how are you to promote your site? First Submit your blog to blog directories like:
There are tools to automate the process, it’s in your discretion to use it or not or should I say to trust a software to do the job for you like the Blog Planter. You can also submit your blog to general directories if you wish.
The next thing is to post a Press Release to online resources about your new blog. This could attract new visitors to your site. There are sites that allow free Press Release posting such as http://www.clickpress.com/releases/
Create Link Bait, it means naturally attracting backlinks for your page. How? There are in fact various ways to do it, like interviewing a prominent personality and publishing it, writing something funny or embarrassing, disagree with authority, anything that will caught a readers attention and would definitely share it with others or talked about it in forums and communities.
Also comment on blogs your niche, including actively commenting on do-follow blogs.
Another is to participate in Blog Carnivals, it’s a Blog community where you could submit your blog to a certain topic. It’s some sort of a magazine only that it’s in the form of a blog article. You can also participate in other blog communities like bloglog.
Use social media as well, like StumbleUpon, Reddit, del.icio.us and Facebook.
There are various ways to promote your site, what I mentioned are just one of the common way to promote blogs. The best thing to do is plan ahead before jumping in to promote your blog, with so many ways to do it; chances are you may not know what really works for you. Establish your blog first the rest of the ways are geared more on active participation on communities. And of course, you must always provide fresh content to your reader. It doesn’t have to be everyday or every week, what matters is the quality of the content you have. Relevant and meaningful content could help you develop loyal list of followers, and as always, give them what they expect from you.
