Posted on 17th May 2009 by iansheldon in Uncategorized
The majority of internet searchers rarely make it past page two of the Google Results, so it makes sense that being near the top of the rankings can radically transform your business. Image, if you will, that the Google results are like a shopping mall, and being near to the top of the listings is like having your shop closer to the entrance of the mall.
The difference with the search engine listings though is that people are actually looking for what you have on offer, so your conversion rate should be much higher than that shop at the entrance of the mall.
This is why SEO services are so competitive. There are literally millions of web sites fighting amongst themselves to claim those top few places. Just imagine what getting to the top of the listings can do for you.
Of course, SEO isnt all about just ranking well. Once you have your visitors how can you capture their imagination? How can you make sure that you are going to get them to buy from you and not somebody else? Its vitally important that you get your house in order before you start ‘inviting people around’
In a nutshell, if you dont optimise your web pages then there is not much point in having a web site. Even more importantly, if you are looking to sell items or services online then Search Engine Optimisation isn’t an option, it should be part of your online strategy from the beginning – not an afterthought.
Posted on 17th May 2009 by iansheldon in Uncategorized
Are you looking to optimise your web pages to try and get a better ranking for your keywords? Here are five quick tips to get your started:
- Check your keyword performance using a tool like Wordtracker or Googles keyword Tool. It is vitally important that you optimise your site for keywords that people are actually searching on
- Dont forget to make good use of your keywords in your TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags on your web page. These carry a decent weighting in terms of your pages relevance.
- Write your copy to accomodate your keywords, however make sure that you write it for humans and not the search engines. Google uses technology known as LSI so you can use words that are relevant or associated to your keywords and Google will establish the relevance
- Make correct us of h tags. By this I mean put your headings in h1 tags, your subheadings in h2 tags. Dont think that you can get away with just using classes to format your page. Its not good HTML and the search engines dont like it
- If you have to use Flash make sure that you provide a non-flash alternative, and where images are concerned make good use of the ALT tags to include your keywords
The above tips should give you a good solid ground in optimising your web pages. As any SEO will tall you the content of your page is the key and if you right clear, engaging and relevant content then you could well find that your natural links will start to grow on their own!
Posted on 17th May 2009 by iansheldon in Uncategorized
A search engine is basically an information finding system in a computer that helps one find out information they are trying to find. They dramatically cut down the time needed to find the information one is looking for.
The concept of optimizing a website for the search engines began in the mid 1990s when webmasters saw the benefit on high ranking of their sites.
In earlier years webmasters were able to manipulate their websites with the result of them being able to get high ranking in the search engines regardless of whether the content of their web page was actually relevant to the targeted keyword or not.
Over time the search engine computations of the relevance of a particular web page to a particular keyword or set of keywords became more sophisticated so that the search engine could tell what web pages were relevant to a keyword being searched for and what web pages had just been manipulated just to gain traffic. This was done by those computing by being able to determine the quality and strength of incoming or inbound links to a web page. This system however was still not foolproof as webmasters were still able to manipulate by exchanging, buying or selling for the higher quality links to their sites. From that point on other factors were entered in to the computations the search engines use in ranking pages. This information is not available to webmasters and the public at large.
There are companies that are search engine optimisation companies. The service they sell to the public is to optimise their website to give it the best possibility of higher ranking with the search engines. If their techniques are too aggressive the effect may be detrimental to their clients to a point where their websites could be banned from search results. Not something you would want to pay someone for.
Some of the search engines have made efforts to communicate with the search engine optimisation companies to get their efforts aligned for everyones benefit. There are those who use search engine optimisation (SEO) to conform with the desires and wishes of the search engines and there are those who seek to get around the search engine rules and guidelines to get what traffic they can until they are caught.
It is a good practice to mix a campaign using search engine optimisation with one of a good paying campaign. The reason for this is that the computations that the search engines use do change and one may see a drop in unpaid traffic due to this factor. It is also a good practice to avoid search engine optimisation companies that make false promises they can not deliver, that guarantee a top rank with Google, that are secretive, that are nondescript about where your money goes, etc.
