Sonu Seo asked:


In efforts to increase sales and profitability, more and more companies are turning to online marketing initiatives – specifically, search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and science of the mixture of technical and marketing into a finely tuned website that is both search engine, ranks well for certain keywords and phrases, and suits your audience a perspective buyer and seller.

According to a recent American study found that only 20% of all businesses outsource search engine optimization programs to professional SEO Companys. The remaining 80% would be to conduct search engine optimization or they believe they have all the resources and skills to do it in-house. Of this 80%, it is likely that 90% of these companies can not be found on the Web – they do not exist. In order to generate a significant amount of Web visibility, your website must typically rank in the top-30 results.

So, the question boils down to what is in your best interest to the business?

Make your SEO program in-house or subcontract. To answer this question we will first focus on the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to implement and maintain a good program for search engine optimization.

SEO knowledge and skills

1) Basic understanding of how search engines and directories.

This may seem too obvious, but you would be surprised the number of people do not understand how they actually work. This knowledge is the basis of your SEO program.

2) Website design

Although SEO is not completely a technical marketing process, it requires a fair amount of technical knowledge of what constitutes search engine-friendly web design. Some elements of web design can help your search engine rankings or hurt them. Simply knowing who is who.

3) the experience SEO Expert

This is the most important and most difficult to obtain knowledge. If you have never implemented a programme of SEO, then you are in a big surprise. Search engine optimization programs require a lot of research and are extremely tedious. More importantly, they need real SEO experience. That means knowing what strategies and tactics SEO work and those who do not.

In-house vs. out-sourced programmes SEO

If your company is considering conducting your program search engine optimization in the house, here are some questions to consider.

• Who will be responsible for the analysis, design, implementation and measure the success of your program SEO?

• Is this considered the role of your department, marketing or other service (s) in your company?

• Do they have the time, knowledge and resources to successfully implement and maintain your program search engine optimization? And do they really care if it works or not?

IT Department

Typically your IT department handles multiple tasks daily troubleshooting your company’s LAN or WAN to fixing the sales department laptop? Over a long IT person of the day, what priority and focus do you think he or she will commit to for your listing? And even if your IT department has some skills in web design or development, these skills represent only a small percentage of the knowledge required for a successful programme of search engine optimization.

Marketing Department

Typically, your marketing department juggles many marketing projects and the faces of both the timely completion. From handling new campaigns for print collateral is preparing to launch new products or services, marketing personnel’s time to spread very thin. In addition, our skills and your marketing department is in the technical aspects of web design and search engine optimization? Do they have the time to become well-versed? Do they have sufficient internal resources? Often, the answer to both questions is no, they do not.

Other individual (s) within your company

Well, the responsibility falls on someone outside or your marketing department. Who’s who and why are they responsible for your SEO program? To give interested parties a new “project of the month,” usually result in another tick off their monthly to-do list and frustration by senior management on their website is why not produce results sales.

Summary

From a business standpoint, it makes sense to try to mobilize domestic resources to maximize your company’s productivity and profitability – whenever possible. However, there must be a line drawn in the sand between what your organization’s capabilities are and what they are not.

As you can see, there are no more search engine optimization than meets the eye. In order to implement and maintain a SEO program, you must acquire the knowledge, skills and resources. This can be done by hiring a professional search engine optimization of the company. Professional SEO Companys have devoted their resources and experience to support your company’s web marketing initiatives. Building on their experience and know-how, your company can quickly and more effectively successfully implement the programme of SEO Expert.

LifeCapture Interactive asked:


Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site.

Most important online medium?

Search engines are the most important online medium to search for information. 92% of all internet users are frequently making use of search engines. Of all search engines, Google is by far the most used search engine. It provides search results not only on its own website, but powers other search engines’ results as well.

Placement at or near the top of the rankings increases the number of searchers who will visit a site. However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator’s goals. A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site’s conversion rate.

Investing into SEO

Since SEO strongly influences the volume of traffic to your website, it is important to invest into this. There are numerous agencies out there that can assist you to get into the top of the rankings. These agencies are usually quite expensive, so make sure a sitemap is present, issues such as broken links are fixed, etc. so the agency can focus itself on ‘the real work’. Since there are so many agencies out there, picking the right one can be quite hard. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind:



Be very skeptical against SEO agencies that unwillingly contact you. Treat them as unwanted emails about ‘making money while sleeping’ and ‘losing 100 lbs in 3 days’. In most cases these are trying to deceive you.

Nobody can guarantee a top position in the ranking list.

There should never be any sort of obligation of putting a link of the SEO agency onto your own website. This sounds very logical, yet once in a while some agencies will still ask you for this, which obviously is very inappropriate.

Talk to at least 3 different agencies and give out the same information. Ask each agency about the difference in their methods and let them explain why they work differently compared to their competitors.

Make sure you are legally covered. Don’t sign any 2 year agreements. Start with a half year or a single advice/training, so you can get used to the agency’s procedures. Make sure you are the owner of the work that gets done when cooperation between you and the agency ends.

Be careful with agencies that are mysterious about their methods and procedures.

Ask the agency in which way they are going to help you; often it’s a case of improving your own organization (such as writing better texts or having the web developer stick to certain guidelines).

Always ask for references. Ask the agency what they did for other clients, so you can get an image of what they can mean to you. If you can verify this with their clients, you’re probably on the right track. A good agency won’t be problematic about this.

SEO is per definition a long term project. Often it can take months before getting good results on all the investments and effort put in. The agency can’t guarantee you any results, but they can give you an estimate.

A solid keyword selection is the base of a good campaign, and crucial for success. The keywords at least have to be picked together. For example, by having the agency do a suggestion which you add up to afterwards.

Make agreements on how success will be criticized. Make sure all formalities are signed on paper. Best would be to measure the absolute number of visitors from search engines as indicator. Don’t forget to keep any seasonal influences and changes in the branch in mind.

Make sure your expectations are very clear and point out which responsibilities you think belong to the agency and which don’t. How often do you want to have contact with the agency, which data do you wanted to see reported, how often, etc.



 

 

SEO – How does it work?

SEO agencies offer services that vary from writing next texts to giving advice on the subject of the website, and finding the right directories which the website can be registered at. A few unethical SEO agencies have given the industry a bad name through aggressive marketing strategies and attempts on gaining ranks in unfair ways.

There are a lot of different theories on ‘the perfect method’ to gain a high rank in the search engine result pages (SERP). The algorithms used by the search engines are secret and nobody can give you a 100% guarantee on a good position. However, through extensive research some methods have been proven to be influencing the ranking in a positive way. Which elements are the most important is unknown, but the following methods will help you gaining a better position in the search engine rankings.

 

Using keywords within the tag

Placing one of the keywords you want to be found on in the title tag will have a big influence.

 

Using keywords in the body text

It’s very important to use the keywords you want to be found on in the content of your website, placed in naturally and logical spots.

 

The relation between your content and your keywords

It’s important to have a logical relation between the content of your website and the keywords you want to be found on.

 

Using tags

Make sure your headers are written in tags. etc, count as well but have less influence compared to the tag.

 

Using keywords in your URL

Even though it’s hard to actually change your domain name, it never hurts to use a relevant keyword in your domain name.

 

Link popularity within your website

When there are 15 internal links of your website lead to contact.php, while 25 links lead to team.php, your team page will be considered more important.

 

Relevance of external quality website

Putting links on your website that lead towards other websites which are high ranked will improve your own ranking as well.

 

The age of the website

The longer a page exists, the more relevant it gets to Google.

 

Visible quality text

Texts have to be visible as text and as little possible through pictures and Flash. The content needs to be as unique as possible as well. When certain texts can be found on the net too often Google will register this as spam.

 

Popularity of your website (links in quality and quantity)

The more links lead towards your website the more important your website will be considered.

 

Relevance of incoming links

When links which lead towards your website also have a relation to your content Google will consider your website more important.

 

Textual links

Links on your website should be made out of text as much as possible. Links in the shape of pictures and/or flash are considered less important. Of course this doesn’t mean you can’t make use of pictures and banners.

 

 

Next to the methods of influencing your position in a positive way, there also are certain attributes that can hurt your position. Be cautious of the following:

 

Server is not accessible to bots

Search engines make use of bots/spiders that crawl your website to index your pages. When your website is offline for more than 48 hours, your position will drop excessively. For small to medium websites with fewer visitors this is more flexible.

 

Used content

When the content on your website is considered a ‘duplicate’, your position will be negatively influenced.

 

Links to low quality/spam sites

Linking to the wrong websites (low quality and/or spam) will drop your position.

 

Using the same title on multiple pages

When identical titles are being used on too many pages your position will drop.

 

Over usage of keywords

Search engines will recognize when certain keywords are being used too often (in order to get a better position) and consider this spam.

 

Buying and selling links

When you try to buy or sell links at high ranked websites, and get caught by Google, your position will drop down drastically and you risk being removed out of the list totally.

 

(Very) slow servers

Slow servers with low response times can cause low ranks when bots can’t get to your pages.



 

See the big picture and how it all ties together for your business?

For a free consultation on Search Engine Marketing, please contact:

Lifecapture Interactive, 1-416-408-4669, info@lifecaptureinc.com, or visit us at www.lifecaptureinc.com.



Backlinks

Mike Smith asked:


The Web is can be extremely unforgiving market place and with competition at a global level, the fight for a high search engine ranking gets all the more intense. Marketing for any online business eventually becomes a fight for a good placement on Google, Yahoo! or any of the top search engines. After all, most surfers begin browsing with a search engine, making search engine optimization essential for all e-businesses. The logic is simple – higher rankings translate to increased traffic with results in higher exposure and sales. SEO remains the number one priority of any online marketing strategy.

SEO techniques are tried and tested methods employed by professionals who have garnered years of experience in web development, IT and Internet-related fields. There are no free lunches in the SEO world! Most “tips and tricks” posted online have been used and abused by web designers everywhere. In addition, some SEO firms offer services that are in blatant violation to search engine polices. These forbidden practices, dubbed black hat SEO, can often result in the death knell for their clients – a ban from a major search engine. Thus SEO remains tricky business, often misunderstood by websites, but still essential for competing over the web.

The Internet remains the largest repository of information anywhere, and like every other topic, SEO has its set of hoaxes and myths.

• Resubmitting URLs: This ancient practice endorsed by novice SEO consultantsmay have helped a few years ago. It is common knowledge that most search engine’s databases are not erased every few weeks. So, a once submitted website’s ranking will not change if resubmitted a few weeks later.

• Meta Tags: Keywords remain essential, but the meta keywords tag has been ignored by major search engines for a while now. It is not uncommon to read SEO advice proclaiming meta-tags to be an essential SEO practice.

• Impact of PPC ads: Another common misconception is that pay-per-click advertising on a particular search engine has an effect on organic SEO rankings. PPC ads have no bearing whatsoever on the placement of a website on the SERP.

• Linking: This practice falls into a very grey area, considered by many to be black hat. Link farms have long been blacklisted by Google, but many a naïve developer falls for the old tip that says “linking with any kind of website is essential”.

These are but a few of the many SEO myths that still persist across the Web. Only an experienced SEO company can properly handle your website’s SEO ranking. Choose an SEO firm that understands well the implications of its practices, and will neither jeopardize your company’s search engine placement nor risk its integrity with black hat tricks.



Backlinks

doc asked:


So far, there is only ONE thing that resulted in sales, and it did not cost me even one penny. That is AFFILIATE MARKETING via FFA search engine submissions.

I received checks for three sales generated through Free-For-All web site submissions. How can I intentionally duplicate these results geometrically by about a factor of 10, 100, or 1,000?

FYI, I’m a very experienced salesperson, with an excellent web site. It’s new, so it’s in the Google sandbox. And yes, it only has about 400 links. Therefore, let’s not discuss SEO or anything that’s related to long-term LINKS or LINKING strategy here. My question is STRICTLY about making IMMEDIATE SALES via the web. (I also own excellent weight loss e-book products and offer online training programs because I am a Certified Lifestyle & Weight Management Consultant.)

I already did PPC, YSM, expired domain traffic, and eBay auctions. All these fail, cost me cash, with no sale or inquiry, just seller fees to pay these vendors.

Help!

Neil Ebsworth asked:


If you think you have come across the title of this article before, it is because you may have. I have purposely copied the title from a Matt Cutts article on article content. I will explain later, but for the beginners out there, Matt Cutts is a Google employee that writes a blog on Google issues and addresses some of the little variances of advice that Google offers on how to better understand their guidelines.

I was a little disappointed by Matts article as it addressed the need to produce original article content by focussing on the niches the article should be aimed at rather than addressing the topic that I thought would be of more importance, namely the quality of content production. The last third of the article was also so stuffed with keywords starting with the keyword SEO that I doubt it would have passed most article submission services requirements that filter out articles that stuff keywords in for the sake of search engine placement…shame on you Matt, I really wouldn’t have thought it necessay for you to keyword stuff!

The main objective when it comes to article marketing is the production of quality new content on subjects on or related to, your websites purpose. The aim, if you then distrubute the article through article directories, is to have your article reproduced by other quality sites in your field, effectively gaining reputation, and ultimately a link back to your site from the publishing website which an interested reader may use to discover more about the given subject.

What article writing is not about is getting a thousand article directory links. Whilst you will not be penalised for publishing in a thousand directories, the main benefit of a wide distribution is mainly for the purpose of gaining exposure for your article so that webmasters looking for high quality content will find your article. As with most things internet related, exposure is king, so article distribution services have there place but if you expect an instant SERPs boost from just the links back from the directories themselves, you will find that only a portion of the reproduced copies of your articles will be taken into account. If however your article is subsequently reproduced by a website in your niche that has a good reputation, ( I think Page rank is still considered a measure of value by most people) then your website will gain points for each article copy found on each valued site.

I recently had a discussion on a forum about quality over quantity. The premise of my opponent was, that you can get articles written for you these days for about $5 a time for a 500 word piece. So why should he pay my charges that were, ( and still are) considerably higher. I tried to explain through that well known saying, that, as with most things in life, ” You get what you pay for” and that whilst his $5 articles may well be written in perfectly good English and be focussed on the subject in hand, he would find that they failed to meet the one criterea that is most paramount when publishing the content. They had nothing to say.

By this I mean that they were ultimately generic using terms and phrases around the issue of the subject matter, but with no comment or opinion on it. For $5 I would not expect any less. If my premise is correct though, that article content should engage the audience first and foremost, these generic unique pieces are destined to sit at the back of the article directory bus, never to be reproduced or read and therefore ultimately of no value.

Writing good quality copy is a professional skill and one that should not be confused with a fifth grade comprehension exercise. If you want your article and therefore your website to be taken seriously, you should treat your article marketing with the respect that you give to your own reading material. Are you a Times reader or a Sun reader. More importantly, what sort of readers are the people you are ultimately trying to attract to your site?

Finally coming back to the title of this article. I copied the title for the article from Matt Cutts article of the same name for one of the reasons that Matt gave in his piece. he said “any time you look for an answer or some information and can’t find it, that should strike you as an opportunity.”

As I felt he had failed to address the more important issue in his article I reproduced the title so that searchers may discover the additional information from this piece which hopefully will sit close enough to Matts article in the Search Engine rankings, filling the void of information that Matt so kindly left open, and sending you to my site for more information…or better still..a commission!

qpuncturist asked:


I am trying to get the most bang per buck for my advertising dollar. I plan on using SEO and organic search results as part of my strategy, but was wondering if using coregistration made the most sense to help get the most opt-ins for my website?

I will be offering a safe, natural, and effective self-help DVD for people who suffer from a certain medical condition…

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