Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

Search Engine Marketing: How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

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by Terry Stanfield

Getting your webpage ranked as high as possible on a search engine results page is one of the goals of search engine marketing and using search engine optimization on your website. But do you know how the search engine actually ranks and indexes web pages? Most search engines use a complicated process to index and rank the web pages that the search engine spiders find when they are scanning the web. Using search engine optimization and putting articles written with search engine marketing in mind will get the search engine spiders to your site but once the search engine spiders find your site they have to index your site and then assign your site a ranking within the thousands of other sites that contain information on the same topic that your site has.

Different search engines use different methods to assign a weight or rank to each web page that the search engine’s spiders find so using different methods of search engine marketing and using different percentages of search engine optimization is a good idea. If you do several different types of search engine marketing and utilize more than one kind of search engine optimization tool then it’s more likely that a search engine spider will find your web page and assign it a higher weight or rank.

One of the ways that search engine spiders determine the weight or rank of a particular web page is to index the number of times that a particular word or key phrase appears on a site. The search engine spider will assign a weight or rank to the web page based on how many times that word or key phrase appears within the web page. This is a very common method of assigning rank to web pages that is used by a lot of the most popular search engines so it’s important to use search engine marketing and search engine optimization to make sure that those search engine spiders give your site a high ranking or weight.

Another way that search engine spiders assign a weight or rank to a web page is to take note of where in the web page a particular keyword or key phrase is located. For search engines that use this kind of ranking system just using standard search engine marketing or traditional search engine optimization techniques might not be enough to get your website noticed by the search engine spiders. In order to draw the spiders of search engines that rank web pages based on the location of the keyword or key phrase on the page it’s necessary to use those words to tag your page. Tagging a page is putting that particular keyword or key phrase in the meta tags of your site, using them in the heading or home page of your site and using those words or phrases systematically through the rest of the site. If you think of your website as a tree in order to get the attention of spiders from the search engines that use this type of ranking system you have to have a particular key word or key phrase on every branch of the tree in order to get a higher ranking.

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Amazing Results Using Search Engine Optimization

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

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by Bob Kekoawiki

While doing business online you have to be competitive. In order to give your site an edge over others you need to equip yourself with proper knowledge and tools. Almost all websites are scrambling to improve their rankings on search engines and if you’re lazy for just one moment you will be left in the mud with countless other failed sites.

A commonly used term these days is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) this is used by many of today’s e-commerce sites. Search engines will have been used and will be used for sometime to come by people to find sites of interest on the internet, search engines have and are being used to locate product or other information they need.

Only the first ten results on the first page are looked at by most users. The success of a site can be measured in terms of where the site in listed on a search engine, it is best if a site is listed on the first page and more so, on the top three positions. A high ranking site has a higher click probability. And more traffic means more business for your site.

Grabbing the top spot and improving your rankings even further is imperative. In e-commerce, everyday is a fresh start for all businesses to rank themselves higher using search engine optimization techniques. It’s of the utmost importance that your rankings improve daily.

What really is search engine optimization and do you really have to use it? The simple answer is Yes. Search engine optimization puts you in the number one spot, and at the very least generates income for your business.

Correct and proper search engine optimization generates high traffic volume. Let’s assume that out of the total number of hits received 10 or 20% of those convert to sales. So if you have hundreds or even thousands of hits a day, your sales would take a boost and you get a good sale turnout. But low hits mean little or no sales at all.

Search engine optimization is a process of utilizing tools and methods to get your website ranked number 1 in all major search engine results. Coming on the initial page, and better yet on the first half of the initial page, will guarantee that your website will generate lots of public awareness of your site’s existence. This will result in more traffic, traffic which will eventually lead to potential income and an increase in business via sales.

A fully optimized site requires lots of work. You will have to change many things on your site or add to your site to optimize it. This includes getting information about phrases and keywords that are popular in regards to your site’s niche or theme.

The content on your website will have to be rewritten so that all the right keywords and phrases are within the content without making it look too commercial but on the contrarily rather light and informative. A bunch of rules and guidelines that you need to follow make your site content applicable and conductive to search engine optimization.

Collaboration with other sites would be required for link exchanges and page transfers as these are a crucial part of optimization. Inbound and outbound traffic generated by other sites among other is also part of the component that search engines use to rank sites.

Help can be sought on the internet. Tons of tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization can be found. Read articles that explain how to optimize your site in search engine results. The more information and knowledge you have the better off you are. All this hard work will result in a higher ranking. This does require a little time and lots of effort but you will get astounding benefits.

If you are willing to pay, there are many sites online that will help optimize your site. There are many sites that track keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also content writers with lots of experience with search engine optimization that can help in making good keyword rich content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. This will result in better traffic flow and in turn more business for your site and business.

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How Article Marketing Can Get You More Visitors To Your Website

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

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by Robert Billings

Article marketing works fantastic for increasing the traffic coming to your website. For anyone who isn’t familiar with it, it’s the process of writing articles about the topic of your website and submitting them to “article directories” on the internet.

As you know, having fresh content on your website and blog is key when it comes to getting search engine traffic. Many website owners and bloggers visit article reprint directories on a daily basis, in search of articles to use on their sites.

By submitting your article to these directories, you’re giving permission for other website owners to use it on their website, on the condition that include a resource box that you supply along with the article.

This resource box is basically an “about the author” section where you can include information about your website, as well as links back to it.

When someone posts your article on their site, they also post this about the author section and everyone who reads the article on their website sees it. Your article can ultimately end up on hundreds of websites, with thousands of visitors reading it and clicking the links through to your own site.

There are plenty of article directories to choose from on the web. All you need to do is search Google for ‘free article directories’ and you’ll find a bunch. Some of them will be topic-specific (say, health or finance related articles for example) while other are more general. You can submit the same article to multiple directories to get the best exposure. In fact, you can even get software that will automate the process for you.

The topics you can choose to write about are limitless. What is the focus of your website? Be creative and think of why someone would want to visit your website and create an article about it. Someone who sells Tupperware for instance, could easily write about food related items or take it a step further an write an article about the fact that the plastic containers are great for organizing toys, bathroom items or even nuts and bolts in the garage.

If you’re not a natural writer, don’t let it bother you. There are plenty of places you can hire writers that will “ghostwrite” your articles for you. The cost will vary, depending on the quality of the writer, but you’ll generally pay between $7 and $15 for a 500 word article. If you really want to be hands-off, you can even outsource the submission of the articles and just sit back and watch the visitors arrive on your website!

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Internet Article Marketing - Tips For An Effective Campaign

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

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by James Comer

One of the best and most popular ways to promote your website is by writing articles. This is not only easy, but free. You may wonder why your article isn’t getting published or passed around. No one is probably reading it. Before you encourage people to pass it around, you need to encourage people to read your article.

Your article was written to be read. When people don’t read it, it basically means no one will publish it or pass it around. Since you took the time write an article you want it to be read. There is no point in wasting your time if you write an article only to be rejected or not read. There could be many articles that are the same written about the topic that you’ve chosen. You should make it stand above the fray. How would you do this?

Some web articles are read but, regrettably, most are not. This is because you are not being creative enough to explore the world of article writing. Bring your article to life. To improve your article, here are some ways to make people actually read your article. You’ve come this far with me, right?

1. It’s important to write about something that is interesting to you. Write your articles in a different way. Most likely, there are many articles that are written about your subject on the internet. You may have seen articles talking about the same thing that you want to talk about, and you may have even done your research using some of them. Being knowledgeable about your subject helps you. Try to approach the subject in a different way. Add some humor, ask some obvious questions about the subject that many people would want to ask, but that most other articles don’t include them. Of course, you should also answer the quetsions. By asking questions and answering them- it makes your article more interesting to read.

2. Your headline should be catchy. A catchy headline is one of the most important features of an article. When your article is included on the list of an article publishing website, it will usually display your headline with a little introduction underneath it. A good headline should catch the attention of people browsing the article publishing website. Some people also searches for an article on a search engine, so it is important that your headline should contain some popular keywords relating to your topic as well. Remember that some people judge an article by just reading a headline. No matter how informative and fun to read your article is, if the headline does not catch people’s attention, they will not read it.

3. Make sure to write a good introduction to your article. People will begin here to read your article. Try to make this introduction “catchy”. Ask a burning question. This should certainly grab most people’s attention. This can also make it easier to progress through your article from one question to the next.

4. Reading With Ease

5. Make your reader believe that you know what you’re talking about. Make it a bit humorous.

6. Do not make a sales pitch. Remember that articles are for information not for selling. It is to make readers know what the product is all about. If you make a sales pitch, you’ll be like an annoying salesman on their front door.

7. And lastly, never forget to include your name, business name, and website URL in your resource box. This is the most common mistake article writers do.

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Here is a Quick and Cheap Way to Get Traffic to Your Site

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

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by Brian Paul

Article marketing is the most effective method of increasing traffic without any cost involved. This is an easy process of using the article, which has a back link at the bottom, to send people who have read it to a website that has more information. Many places accept articles without any charge but they should be sites with a good page rank.

Popular sites are the best because it should give your article a great deal of exposure; it doesn’t take to long before the visitors begin to arrive at your site. Popular sites tend to be recognized as ‘authority’ sites, so if your article is used it can improve your credibility also.

If you perform this article marketing and submission process on a regular basis, people will begin to search for your material and trust your work. If you do not get this trust from people about the quality of your work, they will not visit your site.

Over time the number of links you receive from other high ranking or authority sites will increase your own ranking with Google. As your ranking grows, there will be even more visitors to your site. Links from other sites (especially if they are popular) just improves your ranking and exposure; all at no charge, so free advertising is possible.

It is the links placed in the text and at the bottom of the page that makes article marketing so useful, successful and popular! Each time your article is placed (with the links) on another site, it just helps boost the ranking of your own website!

Just how quickly you will visited by a search engine and listed can vary enormously from a day to months! The process can be speeded up a little if the sites where the articles are submitted are popular and you continue to write and submit articles.

Article marketing helps to improving the ranking of a site but in addition to this it also helps increase the amount of content at the same time which again improves rank. For the most part, people who are directed to your website are not expecting to buy or be sold anything. The majority of visitors are just searching for more information about something.

People searching for details about a product or service will not mind the sales side providing the information is interesting. It is once they have entered your site where you have the chance to sell to them. This a little like taking them by the hand so they know what they are buying and most importantly, why.

Article marketing this way will ensure you will always get new visitors and retain existing ones; regularly submitting articles is necessary and should not be viewed as something you only have to do once. The aim is to have other website owners link their site to yours in addition to using your content as well.

Having your articles on numerous sites just improves the exposure of your site. You cannot dismiss just how effective article marketing is at getting people to your site for free; all you need is to keep supplying them with the information they are looking for in the form of articles.

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Top 10 Tips for Video Search Optimization

Friday, May 9th, 2008

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by Mark Robertson

All have heard about the online video phenomenon that is hitting the internet. Viewers by the millions are going online to upload and watch online video content each day. Often, videos are a more effective way to convey an advertiser’s message than typical offline advertising. And because video is becoming so mainstream, the cost to create online video content is extremely low and affordable for almost anyone. Online video has seen massive improvements in the past 2 years with regard to broadband connectivity, streaming, etc… Keeping in mind the vast popularity of online video as a method of internet marketing, it is important to learn the techniques most effective for optimizing your video for search engines.

1) It is recommended that you create and submit a transcript for users and the search engines, add a transcript to each video file you’ve uploaded via your Video Status page. Create a Keyword Rich Title for your Transcript; include a brief introductory paragraph/synopsis that describes the subject matter of your transcript (and video) and be sure to publish your transcript.

2) Make sure to include the keyword that you are targeting visitors for. Most often users will use the word “video” in conjunction with their search if searching for videos via the search engines. Therefore, it is important to use the word “video in your title, description, meta tags, and any other on-page text that you include with your video.

3) Search engine crawlers rely a lot on the link texts to figure out what the video is all about as they are not capable to figure out the contents of the video otherwise. Therefore it is advisable to get as many back links as possible for your video.

4) Video sitemaps are a great way for you to tell the search engines where all of your video content resides. With video sitemaps, you make it much easier for search engines to discover and index your online video in a rapid manner.

5) It is very difficult for the web crawlers of any search engine to crawl into the video contents inside flash players so they usually prefer to stay away from such files. It is therefore advisable not to use such kind of file formats which discourages the web crawlers.

6) Create search engine friendly keyword URLs for your video pages. To do this, you can use mod-rewrite function or htaccess file so that the URLs are freely assessable and readable by the search engines.

7) Various video search engines use to capture thumbnails of your in different manner. Some of them take the first frame of your video, while others try to take from the middle or end. It is better to experiment with each site individually to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video. A video thumbnail is always crucial when it comes to decide for a viewer which video to watch.

8) If you are hosting videos on your own site, use the sitemap that we mentioned earlier and keep your videos all in the same directory folder so that search engines can more easily locate all the videos you are publishing.

Beside the above mentioned points there are few more points relevant for the optimization:

9) Always make sure viewers are searching for your targeted keywords regularly. If not, try to find the closest related keywords being searched.

10) Enable ratings, reviews, comments, and feedback on your videos. Research shows that allowing users to provide feedback results in greater views for your video in addition to the fact that users who provide feedback tend to be those users that act.

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Optimizing Video Content for Youtube Video Sharing - Video SEO

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

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by Mark Robertson

In 2008, there is plenty of buzz about the new and exciting online promotional tactics related to online video marketing and online video sharing.

Certainly we have all heard about the biggest online video sharing website out there, Youtube. In 2007, Google purchased Youtube and even before this acquisition, the site was growing in popularity each and every day. Youtube is a wonderful site for users to get started with sharing online video content. However, because your video is converted to flash upon uploading it to the website, you need to learn the tips and techniques that will optimize your videos for the best quality result after uploading to the site.

Obviously the first step is to have video content created in order to then share the video online. To do this, you will need the equipment in order to shoot video, edit, and encode video. If you do not currently have a camcorder or other video camera, most digital cameras these days, and even some mobile phones, have video functionality built in. In addition, you can use a simple webcam to produce videos. As far as software for editing and encoding your videos, there are hundreds of choices. Even the basic video software that come with most new computers have the tools that you will need.

While Microsoft MovieMaker is a great introductory program for video editing, it does not do well with videos that are created using a mobile phone. If you are going to capture video from a cameraphone for use on youtube, I would suggest getting Quicktime Pro from Apple. This is a very inexpensive upgrade and can handle conversion in multiple formats.

It is important to note that youtube does not support all of the many many different video formats that are available, and for good reason. However, as a result, you should try to utilize a format such as mp4 or even mov. Most video editing software will support this but if yours does not, I would suggest downloading another program.

When exporting your video, I would recommend exporting to the Youtube recommended size, which is 320×240. Most video cameras and camcorders shoot video at much higher resolutions so you will likely need to compress and resize your video to the aspect ratio of 320*240. If you are using a webcam, sometimes the video exported directly from the webcam is ready to go.

When discussing which quality, or bit-rate, ideally you will be targeting a final file with a bit rate of 700-1000. I would suggest using 1000kbps, but anything higher is almost a waste as it does not result in much better quality and takes much more time to process.

Once you are ready with size, codec, and quality set up, it is time for the selection of your audio format. It is better to use the MP3 audio codec, which should be standard on your editor.

When you are done editing and exporting your video as a .mov or as a .mp4 format, you would obviously want to preview the video and make certain that it meets your standards for quality. If your resulting project is OK by you, go ahead and upload your video to Youtube.

Your video, depending on the speed of your internet connection, will take some time to upload and often several minutes. Once it is uploaded and resides on Youtube servers, they automatically compress and encode your video into an flv flash file. If you followed the suggestions for optimizing your video, your result should look much better than some others on Youtube.

In terms of video search engine optimization, it is always important to know the keywords and phrases that are most relevant to both your content and of course, your target audience. You will want to be certain that you include these words and phrases within the video title, description, and tags. It is also important that you choose the most appropriate category on Youtube to submit your video to.

Choose and appropriate but popular category to post your video in and allow users to post comments, ratings, and embed your video elsewhere as this attracts incoming links to your video page on Youtube and provides you with the opportunity to show up in the Google search results as a result of their universal search initiative and purchase of Youtube.

Good luck video sharing on youtube. I would also suggest trying some of the various other sites out there.

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Why Article Marketing Still Works And Generates The Best Traffic

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

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by Ray Lam

Article marketing is the best free way to increase traffic to your website from a variety of sources. Articles not only contain useful information or content on a particular subject but they also contain the url or hyperlink to the site of your choice. Popular sites are the best because it should give your article a great deal of exposure; within a relatively short period you should start to experience more visitors at your site. Large, well visited sites are generally trusted so if your content is accepted, it should improve your reputation as well; by improving your standing, you will by default, also improve the level of trust people have for you.

This method of article marketing needs to be done almost every day if you want your name to be associated as an expert so people look for your work. Convincing people of your knowledge in certain areas ensures they will always trust what you write. Although it can take a while, this traffic from people that trust you will help your own search engine ranking; the benefit of this is there will be an increase in people that find you through the search engines. The more websites that link to yours, the more traffic you will achieve; the greatest benefit of this is none of it is costing you a single dollar!

A number of links to other relevant sites can be placed in the body text (not too many) when using article marketing. The purpose of good articles is for people to use them on their site, with each having the links to your site contained in them which all helps the ranking. Just how quickly you will visited by a search engine and listed can vary enormously from a day to months! However if you are submitting articles that are relevant to your website, the process of listing your site is usually much quicker which increases traffic.

Article marketing helps to improve the ranking of a site but in addition to this it also helps increase the amount of content at the same time which again improves rank. The visitors you attract have no idea most of the time you are trying to sell them something. There is n reason why you cannot be truthful about what you are doing once they reach your website provided they have useful information. It is at this point that the sales promotion can be used. This procedure is almost like a safety net because you are explaining the process to them so they will not misunderstand. It is this sort of method that stops people from cancelling their order a few days later.

It is this type of article marketing that ensures visitors are always coming to your site; regularly submitting articles is necessary and should not be viewed as something you only have to do once. It is not just articles that you write that will be on other websites but if your site is good, you will receive links from other websites also; your content or article will have information that other people are seeking. You cannot dismiss just how effective article marketing is at getting people to your site for free; provided you keep adding unique, but relevant, content to your site, visitors will return.

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Tips to Save Money by Rewriting Articles and Content

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

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by Harold Barrack

Whenever many people consider the World Wide Web, they think of information. And a lot of the internet-based business concerns are earnestly using or at least debating whether they should provide relevant information on their sites beyond just the basics of their products or services.

A lot of of these online business sites are using private label articles for the content of their website. The use of them helps keep their costs low. Plus an assortment of private label rights articles means webmasters have a lot of opportunities to use them for many niche sites.

Duplicate content is always a concern when using PLR material on a website. Most of the search engines are quite good at finding similar sentences and phrases across the whole internet. Just type in a phrase such as “home page”, with the quotes, and Google will display the total number of web pages using that phrase. We have provided four simple techniques to help eliminate the effect that duplicate content can have on your search engine rankings.

Use Synonyms: You are able to significantly modify the content just by substituting words from the article with their synonyms. If you are good at it, the final article that you make can be more clear and comprehensible than the master article. And you would not require any separate software for this; as Microsoft Word will do a great job.

Extra Content: It is quite easy to add more words to a document to make it dissimilar to another version. This also allows the internet webmaster to add additional keywords which could help with overall ranking. Introduction, Middle and Conclusion sections are also methods to make your material totally different from other versions.

Rearrange & Revise Paragraphs: This is a different way in which you shuffle the articles so that some points are stressed more than the others according to your needs. You can even think about dropping some material if you think that it is not required. Just a simple rearrangement with rewrite work can make the article read different from the original one.

Rewrite: Sometimes a rewrite is the fastest way to go. Read books, search the net and assemble related source material. Use the most popular topics as subheadings and then create pertinent points in each subheading. Once this format is established, all you have to do is to expand on these points to create a complete article.

These tips should enable you to rewrite PLR content quickly so as to provide your visitors with relevant content. The hardest part is to get started.

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Increase Web Site Traffic - How to with paid search advertising

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

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by Terry Stanfield

If you’ve tried to increase web site traffic with search engine marketing and search engine optimization but you still aren’t seeing the kind of web site traffic that you want to have it might be time to consider investing in some web advertising. There are different options when it comes to web advertising but the styles of web advertising used the most by businesses is and paid search advertising. Paid search advertising is a good option if you’ve already tried search engine marketing and search engine optimization because your site is already well set up for paid search advertising. Paid search advertising is paying to make sure that a link to your site and a description of site is placed at the very top of a search engine results page.

This is a smart move because studies have shown that people who are searching for a site will usually click on any one of the first five links at the top of the search engine results page and then they will stop. Consumers almost never click through to the second page of search engine results after doing a search. So paying to make sure that your site is at the top of the search engine results page can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your website. Figuring out how to manage your paid search advertising can be a little difficult if you’re not used to how web advertising works so you’re better off hiring a paid search management company to oversee your paid search advertising. When you’re setting up a paid search to increase web site traffic the keywords and key phrases that you choose need to be chosen carefully. A qualified paid search management company can help you set up your paid search to maximize the time and effort you’ve already put into using search engine marketing and search engine optimization on your website to increase website traffic.

Using paid search to increase web site traffic can be a very cost effective way to get the most of your search engine marketing. Essentially paid search web advertising is just giving your search engine marketing a boost and making sure that people see a link to your site before all your competitors. If your website deals with a popular topic then using paid search web advertising is really like insurance that your site make it onto the first page of the search engine results page.

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