Posts Tagged ‘Internet Marketing’
When to Stop Building Links?
You should never stop building links; you should always be on guard for sites vying for the same keywords. Everybody wants to be on the first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing and when you reached that target it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop. Let’s not forget that being visible on the web opens a door for bigger opportunities. If you want to stop building links just because you reached your target, ask yourself if you’re ready to lose your spot on the search engine result page (SeRP), maybe then you’ll have a second thought.
Building links is easy you just have to do it the right way to prevent being considered as a spammer. Another, you also need to educate yourself from time to time of other ways to get a free traffic or a back link to your site. It’s not just about Directory Submission, Article Submission, Blog Commenting or participating in community forums, if you know how to strategize, you’re up for a hundred possibilities. You don’t have to tire yourself writing articles all over again, comment to blog post you’re not interested reading, try out something new. I’m not saying article marketing is not an effective tool. All I’m saying is, sometimes building links doing the same activity could be tiring plus if you don’t try out something new, you’ll never know which works best or which also drive traffic to your site.
If you’ve reached your target, keep on building links, but this time ADD something new to the activities that brought you to the first page of SeRP. Also, add a new keyword to target, remember, you don’t need to stop targeting the same keywords, you only have to add additional keyword to the list and promote it as well. You can strategize on this one. Believe it or not, it could drive more traffic to your site without losing your position – more traffic to a new set of keywords added, therefore, expanding your horizon.
Don’t stop building links…just be creative…strategize…
Secrets Revealed to Using White Hat Method
Optimizing a site may sound simple, perhaps simple in context if you know the standards set by Search Engines but could get really complicated when it comes to implementation. We already know what on-page optimization is but for those who don’t, it’s the first step to optimizing a site for SE – work within the elements of your site.
- Do create quality content or relevant information but Don’t overstuff it with keywords.
- Do use Keyword Tag but Don’t provide too much keyword 5-7 keywords will do.
- Do use keywords on Title and Description Tags but Don’t overstuff it.
- Do use Alt Tags but Don’t use it to stuff keywords, use only what is relevant.
- Do use Anchor text but Don’t use anchor text to mislead users.
If you notice I mentioned keyword stuffing several times, this is because abusing keywords is a black hat technique. Be reminded also that even if it’s not visible to the end- users how you stuff keywords, like changing the colour of the text to match the background, it can be read by SE. For on-page optimization, there’s not so much to do actually except that you have to update it from time to time to adapt with the current SE standard. Below are other things you could DO to optimize your site:
- Use keywords on your URL structure if it’s relevant to the content, example:
Instead of just www.yoursebsite.com/services use www.yourwebsite.com/seo-service.html or www.yourwebsite.com/linkbuilding-services.html this way you links are also optimized. For products, use relevant keyword for your URL structure related to your page. It’s not keyword stuffing since it will be related to your page’s content.
- Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for leaner code. A well optimize site should also allow SE to read its code easily, by separating content and style sheets you can attain this.
- Use Site Map to easily navigate to your site.
These are secrets to a well optimized site using white hat method. The critical part though is finding the right keywords. The secrets are now revealed what you could do now is finding the right keywords and then adapt this.
VBEC Seminar On E-business at Eagle’s Nest
Today, Saturday May 8th, 2010 morning I attended an e-business seminar arranged by Vaughan Business Center in Vaughan, Ontario. Well, I guess I should say yesterday morning as it is now 12:34 am Sunday morning EST.
Anyway, it was really nice to see our good old Dolores Rotondo back at VBEC (centrebusiness.com) after her 9 months of absence. Teresa is gone which is a good thing for us as we had some conflicts of interest in the past.
The first part of the seminar was presented by Andrew of Biz Launch. I had attended a few of Andrew’s seminars in the previous years. He is simply an amazing presenter. I always enjoyed his seminars before and I did again this (yesterday) morning. He has a way of making the seminars more interesting. A nice touch of humour and his efforts to engage the audience always works like a charm for me ie. I actually stayed awake through the entire presentation.
Andrew talked about the importance of social media exposures for businesses. I realized once again, this is something we just all have to do to promote our business. This is a powerful marketing tool that we have not fully utilized yet for our own marketing campaign thou we do this for our clients. Well, you know we wouldn’t exactly get paid to do it for ourselves thou 
The second part of the seminar was not too productive for me. This part of the seminar was run by a guy name Bruno. The guy was running a seminar on Search Engine Optimization yet, his only experience seemed to have been SEO for his own website! And guess what? This experience seemed to also have been based mainly on “onsite SEO” only. I guess any website owner with some SEO success in olden days when SEO was easier could just start running seminars on SEO now.. ya’ know I helped passing a few pieces of wood last year when my father-in-law was building me a deck in the backyard. I guess I should now start running seminars on carpentry! Viola!
He did not seem to have separated SEO from web design either. According to him (like many others) the web designer is the SEO expert.. well, on the other hand, web designers as well quite frequently mislead people by saying they would include SEO in their web design cost (say what? All these months of SEO work for free??).
Anyways, the food that followed his seminar was good so overall it was worth attending the seminar. Pino and I spoke with Andrew afterwards as well as Judith, a business consultant. We are sure to hook up again in the coming weeks. And oh! I gotta drop by talk to Dolores tomorrow about some ideas I have.
2nd Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website
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).
What else, I cannot actually reveal too much information since it’s a SECRET haha…just kidding. But as a whole, it was more geared toward harnessing the power of Social Media Marketing. What was actually exciting about the seminar was not the Insider Secrets itself, though it was the reason why I actually came but the tips you get from the experts themselves. I will be seeing them again this June and August for SEO and PPC. It’s always my goal to continuously improve, what works today may not work tomorrow. One example, the Page Rank, people are so focused on this, yes Google made an update this April and almost everybody notice an increase in their PR but it doesn’t really mean Google still uses PR. That was actually the question I raise during the seminar and was told by Simon Leung himself that PR is already obsolete.
One more I think you all should know: Google manually reviews each site/ads. They do have a system but the final decision still relies on the reviewer. Perhaps this is no longer a secret, there are just simple who don’t believe that they really conduct manual reviews, like the one who created a scene on the seminar, whoever the guy was, he was rude and today he didn’t come actually. Its okay to challenge the speaker but it’s not okay to be rude, there’s a proper way to argue your point. But I could attest to that, Google actually reviews your site, my personal site actually was blocked a year ago because of malware attacked, I contacted Google and within 2 days I got a response and my site was up again. Systems or software cannot interact with inquiries right, human intervention will always be there. Anyway, to wrap it up, I had fun, we had picture taking at the end of the day, and I have my certificate and a photo beside Simon Leung and Fabian Lim. It was great, this won’t be the last that I’ll be seeing this guys.
I need to take a rest now, it was a tiring day but I had fun.
1st Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website
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:
· Crush All Your Competitors in Search Engines
· Overcome Automated Penalties to Your Websites
· Who Google Values More Than Their Highest Paying Advertisers
· The Biggest Mistake You Can Make on Your Websites
· Setting Up and Designing a Google Friendly Website Layout
· What Would Have Prevented Penalized Sites from Poor Quality
· Which Types of Website Google Associate with “Scams”
· Quality Score Elements You Must Be Mindful Of
· How to Set Up Your Navigational and Outbound Links
· Integrating Social Media on Your Site for Best Results
· One Simple Graphic That Instantly Increases Your Quality Score
· Essential Content Pages That Are Often Neglected On Most Sites
· Your Number One Goal For Every One Of Your Site’s Clicks
· Shocking Quality Criteria Most Websites Never Implement
· Building An Automated Lead Generation System The Right Way
The seminar was fine, the speakers of course are both good and the food served was great, lol. Though I can say that I am not new to this and would say perhaps Google Secret is not really a secret to me and for sure for other Internet Marketers out there, still attending this seminar is something I would opt to. Perhaps a confirmation if I was really doing it right and of course to gain competitive advantage, which definitely is my goal. It was an opportunity for me to listen to these people who have proved themselves well enough to earn six figures, that’s in US dollar. Both has its way of presenting their expertise, while Simon Leung highly recommend to harness the power of Social Media and to patronize its partners (love your own) Fabian Lim on the other hand presented his expertise by actually using a live site and do some googling on a particular term. This is by the way is very effective and I honestly learn new stuff in him with regards to keywords research. He will be here on July to conduct another seminar about SEO and Google Adwords, I don’t have the definite date yet but I will sure be attending. Anyway going back, there were 10 topics discussed today and as I’ve said earlier, I’m not new to this but it did meet my expectation.
Something I learn today about creating sales letter, I don’t know if you knew about this but I only learn it now. Long sales letter are conceived to be scams. I see a lot of that on the web; I’m honestly annoyed when I land on those pages with long sales letter. Simon Leong thought us how to create an effective sales letter, a landing, a call-to-action etc. In short, the seminar was A okay, plus the bonus of what I learn from Fabian Lim.
Tomorrow I’ll share what will happen on the event and perhaps share with you some links or photos of the events. For now I really have to rest from a long day’s event.
What you need to know before Handling your own SEO Campaign
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.
10 Link Building Strategies
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
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.
Link Baiting – Has it Vanished?
Link baiting is a white hat technique which has been around since 2006. It has not vanished, it’s in fact one the safest method of link building. It’s a natural method of having viewers to link on your site perhaps because they find it interesting or worth the buzz. Although I personally no longer read a blog regarding link bait, successful companies usually implement this strategy, viewers are just not aware of the term with what they do when they link to other sites.
According to Wikipedia:
“Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Attempts to create link bait are frequently employed in the overall task of search engine optimization. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “… interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”
So how are you going to create link bait? There are actually dozens of ways to do it, it’s not that easy, in fact you have to keep experimenting, same way as catching a fish – use the right hook and drop it at the right place. But when you succeed on this, you could make even millions of dollars. What do you think readers do when they link to a certain article on ezine to their site, or simply sharing it with others? Its link baiting, Search Engines prefer it because it’s “organic” – meaning natural, its quality vs. quantity when it comes to link popularity.
Some ideas on creating a link bait
- Writing something controversial (works all the time)
- Write a review (new gadgets, establishment or service)
- Oppose someone’s idea
- Write entertaining articles
- Provide useful list of resources
- Conduct a research on something
- Be up-to-date with what’s going on, technology, celebrity, economy etc. and share your opinion
There are far more than I can imagine, you just have to be creative and ask yourself what is your goal for creating link bait? Is it only for the link popularity or to attract a certain niche? You always have to start with something before preparing your bait to catch a big fish.
Why a Website Alone is NOT Enough?
Having a website is just a step forward to having one of the best cost-effective forms of advertising. It’s one of the most affordable instruments to deliver your message across a wide array of audience. It could reach millions around the world – provided you know how to market your site.
Do you know that in the United States, Internet users as percentage of population is 72.4% in 2008 and 72.8% in 2007 in Canada based on World Bank, World Development Indicators. Just imagine the huge market if a website is visible on the web, visible meaning it could be searched. Data provided are just for the US and Canada alone, how about Europe, Asia and others. Having a website is just a beginning of something better for the business. It could unlock doors to vast opportunities, including global recognition. How is that possible? That is where Internet marketing comes in.
A website is a virtual shop an office or anything you would like to call it. And just like any ordinary store, marketing campaign is needed to attract customers – Television ads, billboards, brochures etc. With a website, the more that the businesses need it, regardless of size. Huge market equals stiff competition vying to appear on the first page of SeRP (Search Engine Result Page) particularly Google. It is the no. 1 Search Engine with 67.5% Market share followed by Yahoo according to comScore as of August 2009 report.
There are only two differences between traditional advertising medium and a website. First is COST, a TV ads alone could cost thousands of dollars, uploading videos on the site is FREE. Second, COVERAGE, TV ads only runs LOCALLY, website can be seen WORLDWIDE.
I am trying to point out that having a website alone is not enough; it needs to be promoted and maintained. If businesses have this kind of attitude it’s doomed to fail achieving numerous ways to attract, earn and grow as a business. Website is not just a medium to advertise or sell a service or product, it’s also another means to earn online without shelling out a single dollar. In what way it could be possible? Affiliate Marketing is just one of the few. Affiliate marketing is simply using one website to drive traffic to another and paid accordingly based on the terms. On my next blog I will explain in details possible ways to fully utilize earning potential of a website.
If you already have a website, start promoting it, don’t let it stand there. How bad is a store without foot traffic?, goes the same with a website without traffic. Hire an SEO if you must but be careful how to choose the right one.
To further understand SEO visit SEO Simplified.